Impact of Rooftop Solar PV on Residential Distribution Network

Increased environmental awareness in recent years has encouraged rapid growth of renewable energy sources especially solar PV and wind. Among them, small scale solar PV has been gaining more momentum especially at residential level. Even today moderate penetration of grid tied rooftop solar PV has become reality in many countries. In spite of various benefits, higher penetration of rooftop PVs might come up with number of detrimental effects, with power quality and overcurrent protection being the major ones. Therefore, it is reasonable to quantify both drawback and benefits of rooftop PV to foresee the potential issues of high PV penetration and to facilitate effective solutions for grid reinforcement and grid management. Unlike many research focusing on impact analysis with PV at utility or commercial scale, this research make comprehensive analysis with a detailed modeling of a residential LV feeder provided with small scale rooftop PV. Voltage deviation index (VDI) and power loss index (PLI) has been used to quantify the impacts of PV. Furthermore, overvoltage has been taken as an operational constraint to determine maximum penetration level of PV. The analysis has been performed with various cases and scenarios on a real low voltage (LV) feeder owned by the Danish electricity distribution company SEAS-NVE.