Voltage Regulation with Rooftop Solar PV in Hawai'i - What are the Impacts to the Utility and PV Customers?

The combination of renewable portfolio standards (RPS), which require utilities to generate a specified amount of electricity from renewable sources, falling costs of renewable generation, and the financial incentives for residential distributed generation have dramatically increased the penetration of renewable energy across the U.S. Distributed electricity generation in the residential sector, including solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind technologies, increased tenfold between 2010-2015, and this rise is expected to continue in the near future. This has changed the way both transmission and distribution departments in utilities across the country plan for the future needs of the power grid. In an era of increasing distributed energy resources (DER) penetration, a new framework is emerging among utilities seeking to proactively plan for DER integration.