Grid voltage regulation utilizing storage batteries in PV solar — Wind plant based distributed generation system

In this paper, a novel night-time application of a photovoltaic (PV) solar power farm bidirectional inverter as a battery charger, is presented. It is shown that a combination of PV solar farm and storage batteries can be advantageous in a distribution system having wind farm in close vicinity to the solar farm. Under such a condition, the PV solar farm inverter can regulate the grid voltage (if allowed by the code) by charging/ discharging the batteries as well as provide better asset utilization and return on investments. The PV solar farm inverter is operated as a three-phase fully controlled rectifier to charge the batteries which draws sinusoidal currents at unity power factor operation. MATLAB/SIMULINK based simulation results are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed indirect grid voltage regulation utilizing the PV solar farm and storage batteries.