Practical approach to facilitate photovoltaic integration in distribution systems

Photovoltaic (PV) power is a promising source of renewable energy, which could satisfy a large portion of the authors’ electricity needs. In order to achieve this, a high penetration of PV is required as it is limited in plant factor and its characteristics are completely different from the conventional generators. However, high penetration level might cause some problems for the network operation. One of the potential setbacks that have been widely reported by power utilities is a voltage rise due to reverse power flow. Considering this burning problem, this study develops a practical method based on power flow formulation. In this method, two matrices are derived for estimating the effect of PV real and reactive power injections on the system voltage profile. These simple scalar matrices are then applied to find the voltage sensitive buses and the optimum location and sizing for power compensation devices to improve the penetration level of PV. Comparison between actual and estimated results for IEEE 37-bus test system justifies the validity of proposed method for these applications