Category: Decentralized Voltage regulation by PV-Invertors
Grid Requirement tackled
- In rural networks with many small decentralized PV plants, the main challenge is to maintain voltage bellow the upper limit (+10%) at the customer sites with PV (on the low voltage network).
Approach & solution
- The DSO can request/propose that the PV-inverters are parametrized by the installers with the volt-watt function (also called P(U)-curve). With this smart inverter function activated, the PV-plant is reducing the injected power whenever the voltage increases to much. The PV-plants resolves the voltage-problem by adjusting the PV-power. Even if the solution is surely the easiest and most efficient to solve volage issues due to PV-injection it is not yet used on large scale. The problem is that the associated production losses due to PV-curtailment are distributed very unevenly amongst the producers, which is seen as a barrier for introducing this technology. As this solution is the most efficient in many cases from a system point of view, the DSO can use this flexibility and pay the affected producers by remunerating the production losses. Using the smart meter data, it is possible to estimate with ML-algorithms the production losses of the PV-plant very accurately and remunerate them at the same rate that applies for PV-injection and so remove the inequality issue. More details in the article in Swiss magazine in German and French: PV-Wechselrichter stabilisieren das Netz – Bulletin DE
- The main challenge is to deploy algorithms that estimate the production losses precisely and to get the PV-producers buy-in. It is mostly OPEX. This solution should be deployed very widely.
Benefits
- Machine learning algorithms on smart meter data are needed. Time and economical savings due to postponement and reduction of grid reinforcement needs.
- Customer communication is very important.
- Groupe E has tested this technology in several pilot projects and is starting the deployment.