A Comprehensive Assessment of PV Hosting Capacity on Low-Voltage Distribution Systems

Rooftop photovoltaic (PV) hosting capacity has become a concern for utilities in scenarios of high penetration due to impacts on voltage quality, such as over/undervoltage and voltage unbalance, and on equipment loading (conductors and transformers). This paper uses a simplified Monte Carlo-based method to analyze this issue, which is applied to 50,000 real low-voltage (LV) systems. Results show that it is possible to perform a risk-based analysis of hosting capacity by means of a lognormal distribution. Furthermore, overvoltage is found to be the most restrictive impact of PV integration; such information can help to guide utility actions to avoid technical violations. Extensive sensitivity studies are also presented to quantify the effects of several factors on the PV hosting capacity. The effects of number of customers with PV generators, PV power factor, voltage magnitude on the medium voltage system, load level, and conductor impedances are investigated. It is also shown that the hosting capacity for the entire utility can be estimated by performing simulations only on 1% of the circuits randomly selected. In addition to providing a comprehensive overview of PV hosting capacity in real systems, the method can be used by utilities to improve the management of LV systems with high PV penetration.