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38th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 1688-1690, The Training and Evaluation Platform of the French National Institute of Solar Energy (INES PFE) is a training center dedicated to solar energy. Previously, most training sessions organized by INES PFE were based on an inconvenient and outdated training platform initially designed for the residential PV market. In order to drive capacity building for stakeholders involved in the planning, design, operation and maintenance of PV systems, INES PFE decided in 2019 to design a new training platform, equipping it with cutting edge systems and components used worldwide. The aim of this paper is to describe the technical features of the training platform and in particular two models, one dedicated to PV systems with storage for non-interconnected grids, another dedicated to the connection of large-scale PV systems to the Medium Voltage grid, developed in partnership with Hespul, a French not-for-profit organization specialized in the promotion of PV.

37th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 1684-1687, Following the successful deployment of 33 PV systems with a total power of 2.2 MWp in the Confluence area in Lyon, France, SPL Lyon-Confluence, the city-owned company in charge of this urban development, decided to increase the involvement of stakeholders and to set up a collective self-consumption project within the construction of a new building block in the area. The aim was to give the building block inhabitants a direct benefit from the electricity produced by this PV system according to the French Energy Code. The French Energy Code permits the split of PV production data between several electricity consumers. Each consumer receives a part of the local energy produced during the day (directly from PV system or from a battery) resulting in a reduction of the electricity purchased from a “conventional” supplier.

37th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 1896-1899, SMARTER TOGETHER is an EU-funded Smart City project that aims to improve quality of life for citizens in large European cities. The project focuses on finding the right balance between ICT technologies, citizen engagement and institutional governance to deliver smart and inclusive solutions in three urban districts: Confluence in Lyon, Neuaubing-Westkreuz/Freiham in Munich and Simmering in Vienna. Within SMARTER TOGETHER, Lyon, Munich and Vienna implemented many large-scale smart city solutions together with the involvement of local stakeholders such as the comprehensive refurbishment of existing buildings, the development of e-mobility solutions and the development of renewable energy production systems. This includes the implementation of 16 PV systems in three cities for a total power of 2.3 MW. Although each PV system is quite different from each other, they all share the same implementation policy based upon co-creation processes involving all local stakeholders thanks to strong collaboration with the local city administrations.

35th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 1726-1734, Just as solar cadastres have become the norm to assess the roof-top PV potential in the last years, assessing the hosting capacity of the low-voltage network for electrical production is on the path to becoming a necessity for an efficient solar production action plan. The model developed here is a hybrid tool composed of a physical model computing results based on a real infrastructure and a statistical model using empirical rules based on frequently encountered cases. The tool, built entirely on PostgreSQL/PostGIS, can be easily launched by non-experts on any set of data and on any computer, and has a low computation time. Results show that the major limit in connecting high shares of PV in existing grids is above all the low summer power consumption at noon. Key messages can be drawn from results: 1) hosting capacity of the existing infrastructure on the two territories studied is important but must be utilized with care by avoiding buildings located far from a substation, 2) on the long run, a deep reflexion on grid settings and planning is compulsory in order to achieve ambitious shares of renewable electricity at low marginal cost.

32nd European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 2466-2469, In the center of the Lyon-Confluence district in Lyon, France, the public company in charge of the redevelopment of the area, SPL Lyon-Confluence, launched in 2011 an international design competition for the selection of a real estate developer to build a positive energy building on a 3.400 m2 piece of land called P plot. The team Bouygues Immobilier/SLC in association with Kengo Kuma from Japan has been selected by the jury for the design of a group of 3 buildings called HAKARI with dwellings, offices places and shops for a total floor area of 12.300 m2. In order to build a positive energy building to respect the requirements set by SPL Lyon-Confluence, the selected team decided to equip this building with 2 kinds of PV systems: a see-through PV facade on the MINAMI building (21 kWp) and a rooftop PV system on the roof of each of the 3 buildings (168 kWp). The official opening ceremony of this building took place on Thursday 17 September 2015.

32nd European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 1942-1944, In this paper, we propose an algorithm to compute the shading mask of any PV field based on its production data, GPS coordinates, and global solar irradiation for the site. The model is based on hourly production data, but could be extended to sub-hourly data. The detection of the shading mask through the production curve itself allows the operator to anticipate the production curve due to shading – and eliminate shading impacts in failure detection routines that can then concentrate on component (inverter, string, …) failure, so that operators can responde appropriately.

32nd European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 2110-2112, This article presents the lessons learned from the design and operation of a 300 kWp PV system installed, during spring and summer 2015, on the roof of a new logistic building located in western France. As this building is equipped with refrigerating units, thus with a high power consumption during hot and sunny days, it has been decided to consume the energy produced on-site without any regulated feed-in tariff but with a B-to-B contract, a first of its kind in France. In order to not inject power into the local MV distribution grid, the active power management feature of PV inverters has been implemented, also a first of its kind in France. This paper gives a summary of the detailed on-going monitoring campaign that aims to check if the actual power consumption of the site matches the consumption forecast and if the active power management feature of PV inverters has a significant impact on the total energy generation of this PV system.

27th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 4055-4058, Interactions between photovoltaic systems and the French low voltage distribution grid have been studied within a State funded R&D project called ESPRIT in order to have a better knowledge of the situation and make proposals for a clear improvement of the technical and regulatory framework. The purpose of this project was to guarantee a proper operation of PV systems satisfying both electricity producers and distribution grid operators. Three types of actions were realised: analysis of the present regulation, standards and technical guides so as to identify lacks or inconsistencies, modelling and simulation to evaluate phenomena that are difficult to observe on site (like discharge currents) or assess the possibilities of new techniques provided by the inverters (islanding detection, active filtering, voltage regulation…), and monitoring of PV systems that suffer from any operation problem and analysis of the data. This work resulted in suggestions to improve the regulatory framework, the definition of further research needs related to the implementation of new functions realised by inverters to resolve problems identified and the proposal of a framework for the validation of inverter features and performances.

25th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition / 5th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, 6-10 September 2010, Valencia, Spain; 5062-5063, The purpose of this work was to develop a web-based tool dedicated to the monitoring, in the long term, of many PV systems with the use of a Geographical Information System (GIS). This tool was developed in order to control the overall performance of groups of PV systems installed at the same location and to make sure that they all perform well in the long term without spending to much effort and time. Il is based on an existing automatic failure detection algorithm developed a few years ago. It has been successfully tested on several groups of PV systems in France and is under test on a group of 11 PV systems installed within a demonstration project funded by the European Commission.

25th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition / 5th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, 6-10 September 2010, Valencia, Spain; 4554-4559, Considering the structure of PV systems, a stray capacitance can appear between the PV arrays and the ground. When transformerless inverters are used, this capacitance can cause leakage currents to the ground. According to the French standards, a Residual-Current Device (RCD) has to be installed at the AC side of the PV installation, for the protection of individuals. Yet, when the value of the leakage currents reaches a threshold (30 mA in homes in France), the RCD may switch off and unintended disconnections of the PV installation occur with accompanying production losses. Based on simulations and experimental tests, this project aims at giving information to PV system designers and inverter manufacturers about the best suitable type of RCD to use for several PV system configurations. This issue is relevant for countries with TT grounded networks like France where many operations of PV systems with unexplained disconnections of RCD have been reported.

24th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference, 21-25 September 2009, Hamburg, Germany; 4489-4491, The concept of cities as potential photovoltaic power plants is rapidly gaining prominence, but until now there has been no large scale study of the impacts of such development on urban fabric and infrastructure, or on inhabitants. This book, based on wide-ranging studies supported by the European Commission and International Energy Agency, is the first to properly address these issues. It sets out by looking at the implications on planning policy of PV in the urban environment, and giving an overview of the implementation and occupation processes. It then moves on to present detailed case studies from a range of European cites, examining the role of large scale PV installations in urban renewal and new urban area development stretching back over 15 years. It ends with a review of technical guidelines for PV, and regulation/legalities surrounding planning, building and grid connection. The book will form an essential resource for planners and developers who are considering including large scale PV in their plans and who want to understand what has (or hasn’t) worked, and why.

23rd European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition, 1-5 September 2008, Valencia, Spain; 3743-3748, This paper outlines the results of a wide ranging review of urban areas where PV has been successfully implemented or where plans to implement PV are being prepared. The areas reviewed ranged from those where the planning priorities for an area are still being shaped to those where large numbers of PV buildings were installed over 10 years ago and issues of maintenance and the impact of occupants’ behaviour can be assessed. All the projects are of a significant size, involving large groups of buildings, and have impacted substantially on the urban area where they are located. The range of countries, project stages and stakeholders involved has been extremely wide and this has led to the collection of a comprehensive set of lessons learnt and successful methods of promoting the implementation of PV within the urban planning process which are summarized here.

Electricity, power systems worldwide have traditionally been designed to a vertical v connected scheme characterised by centralised generation. Over the last few decades, several factors have dictated a gradual shift from the central-control approach to a more distributed layout where distributed generation (DG) technologies are effectively integrated and not just connected (appended) to the networks; amongst others liberalisation of electricity markets, security and quality of supply and environmental issues. Photovoltaic powered distributed generation (PV-DG), although still having a much lesser impact than other DG technologies, is increasingly being embedded into electricity distribution networks worldwide within the framework of successful regulatory state and marketing programmes. PV-DG has added values (benefits)for the electricity systems that extend from peak power and load reduction (when deployed close to electricity consumption points) to participation in grid-supporting or grid-forming modes of operation. The question arises as to what the present situation of PV technology is for its optimal integration in distribution networks, whether there are still technical barriers to overcome as well as new opportunities for PV in future renewably supplied electricity systems. This paper presents the current state of knowledge concerning these topics from a European perspective with regard to different grid structures. It also discusses existing standards, flew opportunities to provide grid services and research and development needs identified to fully exploit the added-value-and still developing-benefits of PV-DG.