Impacts of Power Factor Control Schemes in Time Series Power Flow Analysis for Centralized PV Plants Using Wavelet Variability Model

This paper presents impacts of three power factor control strategies (fixed power factor, power factor schedule, and power factor function) on the power output of a centralized utility-interactive photovoltaic (PV) plant deployed close to the feeder end and source using the wavelet variability model (WVM) at various penetration levels. The upscaling advantage from a single module and point irradiance sensor to geographic smoothing over the entire PV footprint in WVM is used to simulate effects of a grid-connected large PV system on the IEEE-34 distribution feeder. Also, this study uses high-frequency solar irradiance data (1 s) to show impacts of PV output variability on voltage regulator tap changing operations, feeder voltage, active power profile, and reactive power profile at various penetration levels until the voltage constraint is violated. Results showed that, although variability increases with PV system deployment close to the feeder source and end, it is higher at the feeder end than source.