Decision-focused Conservation Voltage Reduction to Consider the Cascading Impact of Forecast Errors

Abstract: Conservation Voltage Reduction (CVR) relies on the effective coordination of slow-acting devices, such as OLTCs and CBs, and fast-acting devices, such as SVGs and PV inverters, typically implemented through a hierarchical multi-stage Volt-Var Control (VVC) spanning day-ahead scheduling, intra-day dispatch, and real-time control. However, existing sequential methods fail to account for the cas-cading impact of forecast errors on multi-stage decision-making. This oversight results in suboptimal day-ahead schedules for OLTCs and CBs that hinder the ef-fective coordination with fast-acting SVGs and inverters, inevitably driving a trade-off between real-time voltage security and CVR efficiency. To improve the Pareto front of this trade-off, this paper proposes a novel bi-level multi-timescale forecasting (Bi-MTF) framework for multi-stage VVC optimization. By integrating the downstream multi-stage VVC optimization into the upstream forecasting mod-els training, the decision-focused forecasting models are able to learn the trade-offs across temporal horizons. To solve the computationally challenging bi-level for-mulation, a modified sensitivity-driven integer L-shaped method is developed. It utilizes a hybrid gradient feedback mechanism that integrates numerical sensitivity analysis for discrete variables with analytical dual information for continuous fore-cast parameters to ensure tractability. Numerical results on a modified IEEE 33-bus system demonstrate that the proposed approach yields superior energy savings and operational safety compared to conventional MSE-based sequential paradigms. Specifically, as the capacity of fast-acting devices increases, the energy savings of the proposed method rise from 2.74% to 3.41%, which is far superior to the 1.50% to 1.76% achieved by conventional MSE-based sequential paradigms.