Impact of increasing penetration of photovoltaic (PV) systems on distribution feeders

Abstract

This paper investigates impact of increasing photovoltaic (PV) penetration on distribution feeders. The main focus of this work is on ‘how PV systems penetration can influence operation of the protective devices in the distribution feeder?’. PV systems' impact, in a distribution feeder, for 3Φ fault has been analyzed. It considers fault location and protective devices (PDs) settings (e.g. time of PDs operation before a fault gets cleared by it). This paper is also emphasizing on ‘how the penetration of PV can affect voltage quality / unbalance in the distribution feeder’. The considered distribution feeders are supplying residential network and therefore loading on different phases are going to be unbalanced. The voltage quality at different nodes is analyzed, not only due to domestic load distribution, but also due to output variations from integrated PV systems. The obtained results show that increasing PV penetration can escalate PDs' operational time during 303A6 faults. This work has been carried out using DigSilent PowerFactory®.