A new method to evaluate maximum capacity of photovoltaic integration considering network topology reconfiguration

As photovoltaic (PV) integration increases in distribution systems, an effective way of assessing the maximum allowable PV integration capacity is urgently needed. In this paper, a new method is proposed to evaluate the maximum PV integration capacity with AC power flow limits, and the effect of topology reconfiguration on PV integration is also considered. In addition, the single commodity flow constraint is put forward to guarantee topology radiality. Usually, this problem requires mix integer non-convex optimization, which is a great challenge to solve. To address this problem, second order cones are employed to relax the non-convex constraints so that the model can be efficiently solved. Furthermore, the IEEE 33-bus test system with four PV integration cases for maximum integration capacity is studied. The test result shows the effectiveness of reconfiguration in increasing maximum PV integration capacity.