Enabling More Solar in Distribution Network with an Automated Analysis Tool

As smart grids come into reality, our grid is also accommodating more and more distributed and renewable generation. How more solar generation can be enabled in areas of high distributed generation penetration is the main focus of this research. An automated PV analysis tool is developed to identify critical cases to time efficiently assess medium voltage photovoltaic system maximum capacity. The tool incorporates a set of sub-processes and methods to identify critical cases with spatial, temporal and electrical features. Results show that more than 99% time reduction can be achieved with higher than 97% accuracy compared to running analysis for yearly datasets. Also potentially seven times more PV can be enabled with distribution network state estimation and the PV analysis tool.