Abstract
To meet the United Nation’s sustainable development energy goal, the Korean Ministry of Commerce announced they would increase renewable energy generation to 5.3% by 2029. These energy sources are often produced in small-scale power plants located close to the end users, known as distributed generation (DG). The use of DG is an excellent way to reduce greenhouse gases but has also been found to reduce power quality and safety reliability through an increase in voltage volatility. This paper performs a life-cycle cost analysis on the use of step voltage regulators (SVR) to reduce said volatility, simulating the impact they have on existing Korean solar photovoltaic (PV) DG. From the data collected on a Korean Electrical Power Corporation 30 km/8.2 megawatts (MW) feeder system, SVRs were found to increase earnings by one million USD. SVR volatile voltage mitigation increased expected earnings by increasing the estimated allowable PV power generation by 2.7 MW. While this study is based on Korean PV power generation, its findings are applicable to any DG sources worldwide.
Highlights
In January 2015, United Nation members agreed to 17 sustainable development goals
As can be seen, when there was no distributed generation (DG) penetration, the voltage stayed within the allowable range and no step voltage regulators (SVR) was needed
When 3 MW DG was penetrated at a minimum load, the voltage increased above the allowable voltage to 1.0717 p.u. due to reverse current flow
Summary
In January 2015, United Nation members agreed to 17 sustainable development goals. These included substantially increasing the share of renewable energy worldwide [1]. DG energy sources generate less than 10 megawatts (MW), are located near their end users, and tend to be in the form of renewable energy [3] These sources are becoming popular worldwide due to their potential to limit greenhouse gas emissions, reduce new transmission line construction, enhance energy security, and lower investment risks [4]. They often cause reverse flow [5], voltage fluctuations, and harmonics occurrences which all result in systemwide power distribution grid reliability and safety concerns [6]. These occurrences negatively impact the management of harmonics, stand-alone operations, protection coordination, power factors, and Energies 2019, 12, 652; doi:10.3390/en12040652 www.mdpi.com/journal/energies
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