Energies, Vol. 12, Pages 4568: Theoretical and Experimental Study to Determine Voltage Violation, Reverse Electric Current and Losses in Prosumers Connected to Low-Voltage Power Grid (Energies)

The impact of PV generation distributed in a low voltage transmission line depends on many factors: The distribution lines and PV generators characteristics, its location, operational control, local meteorological conditions, electricity consumption profile, and the electricity cost variation. An atypical and challenging behavior of photovoltaic distributed generation (DG) insertion in consumer units (CUs), implies in some circumstances, as the reverse directionality of the power flow between the load equipped with a photovoltaic system generator and the electrical grid, when a CU contains a distributed generation and low power consumption, the power flow will be directed to the power electric grid. In this work, the modeling of a low-voltage real feeder was performed, setting the variables of the system under real operating conditions. As result, voltage levels variability throughout the feeder, the electrical losses, and the asymmetry between the phases were observed. Through simulation scenarios, the occurrence of voltage increase under different penetration scenarios of distributed generation was verified and there was a 10% increase in reference voltage as well as the occurrence of higher electrical losses by reverse current, reaching 1200% more with a DG penetration, in the massive presence of the photovoltaic generator. The mitigatory action used in this work was able to attenuate the negative impacts to the feeder circuit, ensuring the integrity grid and the consumer unit.