PV Active Power Curtailment for Distribution Network Management

Two of the main operation issues in medium voltage (MV) feeders are the voltage and thermal limits and become more relevant when a significant amount of distributed generation is integrated. This paper proposes a control strategy based on PV active power curtailment for distribution network management in order to reduce voltage and thermal issues in MV feeders under high photovoltaic (PV) penetration in order to postpone or avoid feeder reinforcement costs, when usually this kind of analysis is carried out in low voltage feeders. The strategy estimates the hosting capacity (HC) of the feeders based on decreasing the active power generated by the PV systems as required. The proposed approach uses Monte-Carlo simulations to estimate the HC in the feeder. In order to get more realistic scenarios, stochastic simulations are used to determine the random location of the PV systems, and by using statistics, several PV capacities are proposed. Smart PV inverters are employed to reduce their active power output based on the derived control signals. As an example, Mexican standards are used to estimate the HC and to test the control strategy. The results show an increase of HC in the feeder and benefits as better voltage regulation and thermal feeder profile.