Impact of Solar Photovoltaic Penetration In Distribution Network

The integration of Renewable Energy Generation to the grid steadily being growing due to environmental awareness, green energy evolution and incentives from the government. Most of the RES integrated to the distribution system in the form of distributed Photovoltaic(PV). As seen from the last few years the integration of PV at residential distribution network increases rapidly and it is expected to further increase in the penetration level with growth of RES, causing some undesirable impact on the distribution system such as over voltage, voltage fluctuations and reverse power flow to the grid. A IEEE 13bus test case by EPRI has taken for the distribution system impact analysis in terms of voltage performance and system losses. The distribution system is modelled in the OpenDSS (Open Distribution System Simulator) and interfacing has done with MATLAB to investigate the effect of PV penetration at the distribution system. A comparative study of with and without PV is shown and several PV integration scenarios are discussed with different penetration level. Further mitigation methods are proposed to overcome the power quality.