Fast volt-VAR control on PV dominated distribution systems

This paper investigates the impact of high penetration Photovoltaic (PV) systems on the voltage profile of a distribution feeder. The paper shows that power fluctuations caused by intermittent PV output can affect the operation of volt-VAR devices and cause unacceptable voltage variations on the feeder. The paper also investigates the adoption of a Dynamic VAR Compensator (DVC) to mitigate these impacts. Simulations performed on a prototype feeder indicate that the DVCs will be quite effective in smoothing out even the fast voltage variations caused by cloud cover on the PV systems.