Experimental Evaluation of Load Rejection Over-Voltage from Grid-Tied Solar Inverters

Austin Nelson, Anderson Hoke, Justin Chebahtah, Trudie Wang, Brian Zimmerly, Michael Ropp, Sudipta Chakraborty

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

11 Scopus Citations

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of load rejection over-voltage (LRO) from commercially available grid-tied photovoltaic (PV) inverters. LRO can occur when a breaker opens and the power output from a distributed energy resource (DER) exceeds the load. Simplified models of current-controlled inverters can over-predict LRO magnitudes, thus it is useful to quantify the effect through laboratory testing. The load rejection event was replicated using a hardware testbed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and a set of commercially available PV inverters was tested to quantify the impact of LRO for a range of generation-to-load ratios. The magnitude and duration of the over-voltage events are reported in this paper along with a discussion of characteristic inverter output behavior. The results for the inverters under test showed that maximum over-voltage magnitudes were less than 200% of nominal voltage, and much lower in many test cases. These research results are important because utilities that interconnect inverter-based DER need to understand their characteristics under abnormal grid conditions.

Original languageAmerican English
Number of pages6
DOIs
StatePublished - 14 Dec 2015
Event42nd IEEE Photovoltaic Specialist Conference, PVSC 2015 - New Orleans, United States
Duration: 14 Jun 201519 Jun 2015

Conference

Conference42nd IEEE Photovoltaic Specialist Conference, PVSC 2015
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityNew Orleans
Period14/06/1519/06/15

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 IEEE.

NREL Publication Number

  • NREL/CP-5D00-63597

Keywords

  • distributed energy
  • electric power systems
  • Inverter
  • load rejection over-voltage
  • photovoltaic

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