skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Power Hardware-in-the-Loop Testing of Multiple Photovoltaic Inverters' Volt-Var Control with Real-Time Grid Model

Conference ·

Traditional testing methods fall short in evaluating interactions between multiple smart inverters providing advanced grid support functions due to the fact that such interactions largely depend on their placements on the electric distribution systems with impedances between them. Even though significant concerns have been raised by the utilities on the effects of such interactions, little effort has been made to evaluate them. In this paper, power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) based testing was utilized to evaluate autonomous volt-var operations of multiple smart photovoltaic (PV) inverters connected to a simple distribution feeder model. The results provided in this paper show that depending on volt-var control (VVC) parameters and grid parameters, interaction between inverters and between the inverter and the grid is possible in some extreme cases with very high VVC slopes, fast response times and large VVC response delays.

Research Organization:
National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability
DOE Contract Number:
AC36-08GO28308
OSTI ID:
1344334
Report Number(s):
NREL/CP-5D00-66013
Resource Relation:
Conference: Presented at the 2016 IEEE Power and Energy Society Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference (ISGT), 6-9 September 2016, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English