Adaptive droop-based active power curtailment method for overvoltage prevention in low voltage distribution network

Abstract

Clean energy incentives and the continuous fall in the cost of photovoltaic (PV) installations have led to a steady growth in residential PV systems. One of the main consequences of this high PV penetration in low voltage (LV) distribution networks is the overvoltage issue. Active power curtailment of PV inverters has been previously used to curtail the output power of the inverters below its operating point to prevent such overvoltages. This technique, however, uses a constant droop-based approach to curtail the power, based on the difference between the measured voltage and a critical voltage level. In this paper, this technique is implemented in a typical LV distribution network in North America with high PV penetration level. The simulation results show that the system undergoes excessive curtailment resulting in unnecessary energy loss. An adaptive droop-based approach using adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) is proposed as a possible solution to minimize the total energy loss in the system while keeping the system voltage under the critical operating limits. The energy loss due to curtailment has decreased by 25% after implementing the adaptive-droop based approach using ADP.