Grid Support Functions Impact on Residential Voltage Profile for Updated Canadian Interconnection Standard

The high penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) (especially PV) presents a number of technical challenges for power system operation; one of them being overvoltage. To better manage the grid operation, the interconnection standards around the world are including requirement of grid support functions (GSFs) for these DERs. The recently updated Canadian interconnection standard, CSA C22.3 No. 9 also included advanced GSFs requirements for these DERs. This paper investigates the impact of high PV penetration on the voltage profile of Canadian suburban residential neighborhood. The initial base case is established with the consideration of the legacy PV inverter (unity power factor operation) in 216 houses in which case voltage violation is observed in the network. Then the voltage profile of the neighborhood is compared for three separate scenarios with different GSFs; fixed power factor, Volt-Var and Volt-Watt. Each GSF is configured according to the CSA C22.3 No. 9 standard. These functions can mitigate/reduce the overvoltage issues in different proportions, e.g., voltage violation does not occur for fixed power factor operation. The impact of these GSFs on the customer PV production (active power) and the loading of the network component are also analyzed in this paper.