Impact of high-penetration photovoltaic on synchronous generator stability

This paper presents the results of transient stability analysis of the synchronous generator in the power system with high levels of photovoltaic (PV) penetration. With the increasing PV penetration levels, the capacity of the synchronous generator needs to be reduced relatively in order to maintain power supply-demand balance. This leads to the lower system inertia and the higher generator reactance, and hence the transient stability may negatively be affected. In particular, the impact on the transient stability may become more serious when the considerable amounts of PV systems are disconnected simultaneously during voltage sag. In this paper, the potential impact of significant PV penetration on the transient stability is assessed by a numerical simulation using PSCAD/EMTDC.