Impact of FERC 661-A and IEEE 1547 on Photovoltaic inverter design

Author

Schauder, Colin

Author_Institution

Satcon Technol. Corp., Boston, MA, USA

fYear

2011

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

6

Abstract

Photovoltaic (PV) inverters may be subject to different standards and interconnection requirements, depending on their size and interconnection point. PV plants connected at transmission voltage levels may be expected to ride through faults and other disturbances, as expressed in FERC Order 661-A for wind power plants. Islanding detection is not necessary, because customers are not directly served from these plants. On the other hand, PV units connected to distribution feeders are expected to trip automatically during voltage and frequency excursions, as expressed in IEEE Std. 1547. Distribution-connected PV inverters have islanding detection that is designed to meet UL 1741. These conflicting requirements may appear as "wind vs. solar" or "transmission vs. distribution" viewpoints. The impacts on utility-scale PV inverter design and specification are discussed.

Keywords

IEEE standards; invertors; photovoltaic power systems; wind power plants; FERC order 661-A; IEEE 1547; PV plants; PV units; UL 1741; distribution feeders; distribution-connected PV inverters; islanding detection; photovoltaic inverter design; transmission voltage levels; wind power plants; Aggregates; Circuit faults; Generators; Inverters; Reactive power; Voltage control; Distributed Generation; Distributed Resources; Grid Connection Standard; Photovoltaic Inverter; Renewable Power;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Power and Energy Society General Meeting, 2011 IEEE

Conference_Location

San Diego, CA

ISSN

1944-9925

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-1000-1

Electronic_ISBN

1944-9925

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PES.2011.6039851

Filename

6039851