Novel application of a PV solar plant as STATCOM during night and day in a distribution utility network

Author

Varma, Rajiv ; Rangarajan, Shriram S. ; Axente, Lurie ; Sharma, Vinay

Author_Institution

Electr. & Comput. Eng. Dept., Univ. of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

fYear

2011

fDate

20-23 March 2011

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

8

Abstract

PV solar farms produce power during the day and are completely idle in the nights. This paper presents a novel utilization of a PV solar plant as STATCOM in the night for load reactive power compensation and voltage control. This STATCOM functionality will also be available to a substantial degree during the daytime with the inverter capacity remaining after real power production. The local distribution company London Hydro is implementing this new technology, for the first time in Canada, on a 10 kW solar system to be installed on the rooftop of their headquarters building. The PV solar plant inverter controller will be designed, developed and tested in the university Lab and will then be installed in field by Spring 2011. This paper presents the EMTDC/PSCAD simulation studies of the performance of the 10 kW PV solar plant as a STATCOM. The benefits of employing such a new control of the PV solar system as a Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) device are presented.

Keywords

flexible AC transmission systems; invertors; photovoltaic power systems; reactive power control; static VAr compensators; voltage control; EMTDC; PSCAD; PV solar plant; STATCOM; distribution utility network; flexible AC transmission system; inverter controller; load compensation; power 10 kW; reactive power compensation; voltage control; Copper; Gold; Distribution Systems; FACTS; Photovoltaic solar system; Power Factor Correction; Reactive Power Compensation; STATCOM; Voltage Regulation;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Power Systems Conference and Exposition (PSCE), 2011 IEEE/PES

Conference_Location

Phoenix, AZ

Print_ISBN

978-1-61284-789-4

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-61284-787-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PSCE.2011.5772611

Filename

5772611