Decentralized control of inverter networks for PV generation plants using real-time pricing strategy

Abstract

Global warming and the depletion of fossil fuels encourage installing a large scale PV (photovoltaic) system. The large scale PV system may cause a issue of the voltage rise at an interconnection point due to the reverse power flow. This paper investigates the distributed management problem of PCSs (power conditioning systems) which are used to interconnect the PV system to the power gird. We consider the real-time pricing strategy of the utility, a management office of the PV systems, and each PCS determines own reference input of the reactive power flow by solving the optimization problem including the provided price. This feedback interaction of the utility and PCSs suppresses the voltage deviation. The effectiveness of the proposed distributed management methodology is evaluated through the real physical experiments.