Intelligent Sampling of Periods for Reduced Computational Time of Time Series Analysis of PV Impacts on the Distribution System

In this work, a sampling method, known as intelligent sampling (IS), is presented to reduce simulation time in Quasi Static Time Series (QSTS) analysis on electrics grids with distributed PV. The sampling method decomposes a year's worth of input solar and load data into six hour intervals and bins the intervals according to irradiance and load metrics. Representative samples are chosen from the bins and simulated using standard power flow solvers. We show that when using the IS method, only a fraction of the total entries in the year need to be simulated. An example test circuit is used and the IS method achieves a 57% reduction in simulation time while meeting acceptable error margins.