Photovoltaic System Sizing for Reliability Improvement in an unreliable Power Distribution System

This paper proposes a photovoltaic-battery storage system (PV-BSS) to improve the reliability of a power distribution network with frequent outages, encountered in many developing countries. The system sizing methodology takes into account the loss of power supply probability (LPSP) and the cost of energy. A genetic algorithm is used for achieving improved reliability with an optimal cost of energy by determining the Pareto solutions set. A detailed outage survey characterized by the number and duration of outages experienced by a typical customer on a selected weak distribution system is examined. For this study, real load demand and outage data have been recorded for a university building in Ethiopia. Moreover, long-term outage data was analyzed and studied to understand the overall outage situation, which clearly showed its randomness. The proposed PV-BSS helps to reduce the loss of power and achieve a reliable power supply with zero LPSP for the case considered. Currently, without any standby and backup system, the building has a poor power supply with an erratic outage of about 6% LPSP.