Title :
Integrating high penetrations of PV into Southern California: Year 2 project update
Author :
Mather, Barry ; Neal, Russell
Author_Institution :
Nat. Renewable Energy Lab., Golden, CO, USA
Abstract :
Southern California Edison (SCE) is well into a five-year project to install a total of 500 MW of distributed photovoltaic (PV) energy within its utility service territory. Typical installations to date are 1-3 MWpeak rooftop PV systems that interconnect to medium-voltage urban distribution circuits or larger (5 MWpeak) ground-mounted systems that connect to medium-voltage rural distribution circuits. Some of the PV system interconnections have resulted in distribution circuits that have a significant amount of PV generation compared to customer load, resulting in high-penetration PV integration scenarios. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and SCE have assembled a team of distribution modeling, resource assessment, and PV inverter technology experts in order to investigate a few of the high-penetration PV distribution circuits. Currently, the distribution circuits being studied include an urban circuit with a PV penetration of approximately 46% and a rural circuit with a PV penetration of approximately 60%. In both cases, power flow on the circuit reverses direction, compared to traditional circuit operation, during periods of high PV power production and low circuit loading. Research efforts during year two of the five-year project were focused on modeling the distribution system level impacts of high-penetration PV integrations, the development and installation of distribution circuit data acquisition equipment appropriate for quantifying the impacts of high-penetration PV integrations, and investigating high-penetration PV impact mitigation strategies. This paper outlines these research efforts and discusses the following activities in more detail: the development of a quasi-static time-series test feeder for evaluating high-penetration PV integration modeling tools; the advanced inverter functions being investigated for deployment in the project´s field demonstration and a power hardware-in-loop test of a 500-kW PV inverter - mplementing a limited set of advanced inverter functions.
Keywords :
data acquisition; distribution networks; installation; invertors; load flow; photovoltaic power systems; power system interconnection; time series; National Renewable Energy Laboratory; PV inverter technology; Southern California Edison; data acquisition equipment; distributed photovoltaic energy; ground-mounted systems; high PV power production; high-penetration PV distribution circuits; installations; medium-voltage rural distribution circuits; medium-voltage urban distribution circuits; power 500 MW; power 500 kW; power flow; power hardware-in-loop test; quasistatic time-series; resource assessment; rooftop PV systems interconnection; rural circuit; utility service territory; year 2 project update; Integrated circuit modeling; Inverters; Laboratories; Reactive power; Switches; Voltage control; PHIL; PV impact; distribution system; high-penetration PV integration; power hardware-in-loop testing;
Conference_Titel :
Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2012 38th IEEE
Conference_Location :
Austin, TX
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-0064-3
DOI :
10.1109/PVSC.2012.6317711