Analysis of High-Penetration Levels of PV into the Distribution Grid in California
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Awardee:
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National Renewable Energy Laboratory / Southern California Edison |
| Project Partners: | Clean Power Research, Electrical Distribution Design, Satcon |
| Award Date: | March 11, 2010 |
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CSI RD&D Funding:
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$1,600,000 |
| Match Funding: | $1,400,000 |
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Start Date:
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Nov 2010 |
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End Date:
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Nov 2012 |
| Project Manager: | Ben Kroposki / Russell Neal |
| 303-275-2979 | |
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Benjamin.kroposki @ nrel.gov / Russell.Neal @ sce.com |
| Grant Manager: | Stephan Barsun |
| 509-891-3187 | |
| stephan.barsun @ itron.com |
Summary
Sustaining high growth rates in the photovoltaic (PV) industry requires being able to successfully integrate PV into the electric power system while maintaining reliability. This project addresses the issues with integrating high levels of PV into the electrical distribution system by fully examining the issues, developing solutions, and transitioning those solutions to the field for large-scale deployment.
California regulators recently approved Southern California Edison (SCE)'s plan to install 500 MW of distributed solar in its service territory over the next five years. This installation will represent the highest level of distributed PV in any utility service territory in the United States and have several distribution circuits with high penetrations of PV. Substantial efforts must be undertaken to ensure that SCE can integrate this amount of PV into its distribution systems while maintaining system reliability.
To understand the impact of these new PV installations on the distribution grid, the project team will conduct modeling and simulation, laboratory testing, and field demonstrations of the effect of high penetrations of PV on electrical distribution systems.
The project team will first define a number of factors and impacts related to introducing high penetration PV systems into the electrical distribution system and define hardware and software solutions. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) will conduct laboratory testing on advanced inverters and control systems developed by Satcon. These advanced systems will be installed in second-year PV projects in the SCE service territory to help eliminate issues that arise due to high penetration levels of PV, such as voltage regulation or unintentional islanding. The NREL testing will consist of developing the functional requirements and then implementing them in hardware.
The final results from this project will be summarized into technical reports on best practices, designed to instruct utilities on how to integrate high levels of distributed PV systems into the electrical distribution grid. This will accelerate the placement of high levels of PV into existing distribution circuits and identify new circuit configurations that will help increase PV penetration levels.
Status
| Time Period | Activity |
| Nov 2010 | Project started |
Project Documents/Website Links
- Project presentation PDF (105 KB)
