Incorporating PV Inverter Control Schemes for Planning Active Distribution Networks

The distribution network planning under active network management (ANM) schemes is becoming of interest due to substantial benefits in facilitating the increasing integration of renewable energy sources. This paper presents various potential ANM schemes based on the photovoltaic inverter control (PVIC) considering enhanced utilization of the inverter reactive power capability. Depending on the active power generation of PV arrays, inverter size and desired reactive power settings, several PVIC schemes are proposed. The PVIC schemes are incorporated in the optimal power flow (OPF) and formulated as a nonlinear programming (NLP) problem. In this study, the PVIC schemes are applied to maximize the total wind-distributed generation (DG) penetration on a typical U.K. distribution system. Various case studies are presented and compared to evaluate the performance. The results show that the proposed schemes can significantly increase the wind penetration levels by 45.4% and up to 92.3%.