Impact on voltage rise of PV generation in future swedish urban areas with high PV penetration

There have been a large amount of statements from different countries, claiming that the integration of photovoltaic generation in the distribution grids can eventually impact the power quality and pose challenges for the distribution system operator. In Sweden, the level of penetration of small scale distributed generation is still low and no such problems have been observed. This study is conducted to investigate the voltage levels in an urban distribution grid when the level of photovoltaic generation is increased. The study is done by modeling the Swedish urban area by PSCAD. The aspects of the model include network design of a real distribution grid, everyday load, photovoltaic generation based on real data, photovoltaic penetrations at different levels and considers the current regulations in Sweden. The results indicate that there are no problems with overvoltages even with a high penetration of photovoltaic generation. Instead the risk of over-current through the installed cables seems to be a greater limitation. The loading of the distribution transformers is decreased due to the mix of commercial and domestic loads in the local grid.