The widespread introduction of functionally-smart inverters will be an indispensable factor for the large-scale penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) via the power system. On the other hand, further smartization based on the data-centric operation of smart inverters (S-INVs) is required to cost-effectively achieve the same level of power system operational performance as before under circumstances where the spatio-temporal behavior of power flow is becoming significantly complex due to the penetration of DERs. This review provides an overview of current ambitious efforts toward smartization of operational management of DER inverters, clarifies the expected contribution of machine learning technology to the smart operation of DER inverters, and attempts to identify the issues currently open and areas where research is expected to be promoted in the future.

The use of electric vehicles (EVs) and photovoltaics (PV) is increasing worldwide. Transportation networks require the effective use of renewable energy (RE) for EVs, whereas power networks require local consumption of PV energy, mainly at the initiative of local governments. Although many previous studies have addressed these requirements using private EVs as mobile storages, their uncertainty and uncontrollability remain highly problematic. Therefore, our previous studies focused on electric buses because of their high controllability and certainty. These studies involved the development and evaluation of two independent minimization problems—kilowatts (KW) and kilowatt-hours (KWH) of surplus RE—as a charging schedule optimization method using mixed integer linear programming. However, the feasibility of simultaneously minimizing KW and KWH still presented technical problems. This study aims to extend and generalize the method to the simultaneous minimization of KW and KWH of the PV-derived reverse power flow (RPF). With this multiobjective optimization, the KW peak-cut of the RPF improves the hosting capacity and increases the availability of connectable RE resources, whereas the minimization of KWH promotes the local consumption of RE and decarbonization of public transportation. Two simulations using detailed data of actual bus operations and actual power flow data for a real city confirmed the feasibility of simultaneously optimizing KW and KWH and the relationship between these indicators and number of EV chargers. The optimized charging of the 17 electric buses achieved a maximum of 211.4 kW peak-cut and 1318.4 kWh RE-RPF absorption, reducing CO ₂ emissions by 495.7 kg/day.

To address power outages, cooperative utilization of consumer-side resources through power sharing and exchange is expected to enhance resilience. In our previous study, we proposed the multilevel resource priority management method that considers the use of individual resources and incorporates load suppression. Building on this foundation, this study proposes an extended resilience management method that dynamically prioritizes consumer resources based on the state of consumer resilience. In this method, the tradeoff between consumer priority and mutual-support priority is defined as a multistage dynamical priority management model and formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming optimization problem. As a numerical example, the simulation of a consumer model with 512 households representing the size of one feeder in a distribution system was conducted. Furthermore, an equality index was introduced to assess variations in resilience services between each consumer. Consequently, the relationship between the priority management model, cooperative group size, and equality index was clarified.

To address the operational challenges posed by the high penetration of photovoltaic systems in distribution networks—such as system congestion, voltage violations, and increased distribution losses—this study proposes a spatiotemporal sparsified dynamic reconfiguration scheduling method considering practical implementation in real distribution system operations. The proposed framework comprises two complementary sparsification mechanisms. Spatial sparsification is achieved by clustering hourly net-load distributions in a high-dimensional net-load space to aggregate characteristic net-load patterns, thereby restricting power flow evaluations and configuration screening to a small set of representative patterns and substantially reducing the computational burden. Temporal sparsification is realized by solving an integer linear programming problem to optimize the reconfiguration schedule under a daily reconfiguration frequency constraint, which optimizes the reconfiguration timing while mitigating excessive switching operations. Numerical experiments under deterministic forecast assumptions demonstrated that the proposed method can effectively eliminate congestion and voltage violations while achieving loss reduction by 4.56% and 27.4% respectively in two scenarios from the conventional method with the computational scalability significantly improved.