Abstract:
There are more large-scale photovoltaic (PV) plants being established in rural areas due to availability of low-priced land. However, distribution grids in such areas traditionally have feeders with low X/R ratios, which makes the independent reactive power compensation method less effective on voltage regulation. Consequently, upstream step voltage regulator (SVR) may suffer from excessive tap operations with PV-induced fast voltage fluctuations. Although a battery energy storage system (BESS) can successfully smooth PV generation, frequent charge/discharge will substantially affect its cost effectiveness. In this paper, a real-time method is designed to coordinate PV inverters and BESS for voltage regulation. To keep up with fast fluctuations of PV power, this method will be executed in each 5 s control cycle. In addition, charging/discharging power of BESS is adaptively retuned by an active adjustment method in order to avoid BESS premature energy exhaustion in a long run. Finally, through a voltage margin control scheme, the upstream SVR and downstream PV inverters and BESS are coordinated for voltage regulation without any communication. This research is validated via a real-time digital simulator MatLab cosimulation platform, and it will provide valuable insights and applicable strategies to both utilities and PV owners for large-scale PV farm integration into rural networks.
Licheng Wang, Feifei Bai, Ruifeng Yan, Tapan Kumar Saha, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Volume 33, Issue 3, May 2018
KEYWORDS: Coordinated voltage control, photovoltaic (PV), battery energy storage system (BESS), real-time control, state of charge (SOC) regulation