Impact of high penetration residential PV systems on distribution systems

This paper investigates the operation and protection issues on a distribution system with high penetration of residential PV systems. PV systems are smaller scale resources and therefore they have different impact on a distribution circuit than larger scale resources. The paper indeed considers a typical residential feeder and investigates PV system impacts on the system at different penetration levels. Simulations on this system show that the even the high penetration level PV systems can be accommodated as the impact on the system will not be severe.

I. Introduction

W^Ithin the last decade, considerable progress has been made towards facilitating distributed generation (DG) at the distribution level. The main IEEE standard IEEE 1547 now provides the basic guidelines [ ]. As the standard reflects, most of the efforts have been focused on the integration of larger and commercial scale DGs on the distribution circuits; as such systems can have considerable effect on the operation and control of the system [1]–[7].