Dynamic grid support system for mitigation of impact of high penetration solar PV into grid

Abstract

The growing global energy needs and the immediate need for an environment friendly sustainable growth have made us to focus on renewable energy sources, especially wind and solar. These renewable energy resources when implemented in large scale without any specialized controls are found to impact the integrity, reliability, security and stability of the power grid. Solar PV has become the major portion among the utility level renewable energy power plants. Solar PV power penetration into the grid is on continuous rise and plants of order of hundreds of MW are coming up in India and at global level. In India, till now the utility scale solar PV installations do not follow any specialized controls for grid support and will just get disconnected when there is a grid disturbance. This will severely impact the grid when the size and scale of the solar PV plant is huge. In this paper, initially, the drawbacks of large penetration of solar PV into the network is discussed along with a brief summary of the PV penetration analysis done on IEEE 9-bus system using ETAP. Further, various techniques for mitigation of impact of large penetration of solar PV into the grid have been identified and discussed. Dynamic grid support system with Low Voltage Fault Ride Through (LVRT) and Reactive Power Control has been implemented for a grid connected solar PV system using MATLAB Simulink. This technique will greatly help in reducing the impact of large penetration of solar PV into the network.