Experimental evaluation of load rejection over-voltage from grid-tied solar inverters

This paper investigates the impact of load rejection over-voltage (LRO) from commercially available grid-tied photovoltaic (PV) inverters. LRO can occur when a breaker opens and the power output from a distributed energy resource (DER) exceeds the load. Simplified models of current-controlled inverters can over-predict LRO magnitudes, thus it is useful to quantify the effect through laboratory testing. The load rejection event was replicated using a hardware testbed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and a set of commercially available PV inverters was tested to quantify the impact of LRO for a range of generation-to-load ratios. The magnitude and duration of the over-voltage events are reported in this paper along with a discussion of characteristic inverter output behavior. The results for the inverters under test showed that maximum over-voltage magnitudes were less than 200% of nominal voltage, and much lower in many test cases. These research results are important because utilities that interconnect inverter-based DER need to understand their characteristics under abnormal grid conditions.