An Iterative Approach to Improve PV Hosting Capacity for a Remote Community

Remote communities are largely supplied by diesel generating plants. With weak grid and sparse communities over a large geographical area, photovoltaic distributed generation (PVDG) with battery energy storage systems (BESS) can be a viable alternative to grid upgrade while reducing dependence on fossil fuel based generation. This paper presents results of a research study for improving the hosting capacity of distribution systems in remote communities in the northwestern part of Canada. The proposed iterative approach seeks to exploit untapped potential of existing grid infrastructure along with the four-quadrant operation of BESS to maximize the feeder's hosting capacity. The proposed approach uses the headroom of overvoltage limit made available by several voltage regulators in the remote feeder to increase its hosting capacity by as much as 25%. Based on simulations with annual load profiles and site- specific PV generation profiles, it is shown that BESS can further improve the feeder hosting capacity by up to 60% with reactive power support. A comparison is also drawn between the options of grid-upgrade versus the use of BESS for improving hosting capacity. Three BESS technologies are compared with their cost metric for this application.