Advanced Inverter Technology for High Penetration Levels of PV Generation in Distribution Systems

Barry Mather, Colin Schauder, Barry Mather (NREL Technical Monitor)

Research output: NRELSubcontract Report

Abstract

This subcontract report was completed under the auspices of the NREL/SCE High-Penetration Photovoltaic (PV) Integration Project, which is co-funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) and the California Solar Initiative (CSI) Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment (RD and D) program funded by the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) and managed by Itron. This project is focused on modeling, quantifying, and mitigating the impacts of large utility-scale PV systems (generally 1-5 MW in size) that are interconnected to the distribution system. This report discusses the concerns utilities have when interconnecting large PV systems that interconnect using PV inverters (a specific application of frequency converters). Additionally, a number of capabilities of PV inverters are described that could be implemented to mitigate the distribution system-level impacts of high-penetration PV integration. Finally, the main issues that need to be addressed to ease the interconnection of large PV systems to the distribution system are presented.
Original languageAmerican English
Number of pages35
StatePublished - 2014

Bibliographical note

Work performed by Satcon Technology Corporation, Boston, Massachusetts

NREL Publication Number

  • NREL/SR-5D00-60737

Keywords

  • advanced capability
  • inverter
  • PV
  • ramp rate mitigation
  • SATCON
  • Volt/Var

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