Emerging power quality challenges due to integration of renewable energy sources

Abstract

Renewable energy becomes a key contributor to our modern society, but their integration to power grid poses significant technical challenges. Power quality is an important aspect of renewable energy integration. The major power quality concerns are: 1) Voltage and frequency fluctuations, which are caused by non-controllable variability of renewable energy resources. Their intermittent nature due to ever-changing weather conditions leads to voltage and frequency fluctuations at the interconnected power grid. 2) Harmonics, which are introduced by power electronic devices utilized in renewable energy generation. When penetration level of renewable energy is high, the influence of harmonics could be significant. In this paper, an extensive literature review is conducted on emerging power quality challenges due to renewable energy integration. The paper consists of two sections: 1) Power quality problem definition. Wind turbines and solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and their power quality issues are summarized. 2) Existing approaches to improve power quality. Various methods are reviewed. The future research directions for emerging power quality challenges for renewable energy integration are recommended in the paper.