Indirect congestion management approach in distribution system with high PV penetration

Abstract

By ever-increasing demand for electrical power and lack of interminable fossil fuel resources, the trend toward renewable energies such as solar photovoltaic is inevitable. Since the technology cost of distributed energy resources (DER) has decreased, the inclination toward using these systems in buildings has increased substantially. High penetration of photovoltaic systems in residential sectors can cause problems in the distribution system, especially when the solar irradiation is high and the electricity demand is low. This paper addresses the congestion problem caused by high PV penetration in a residential distribution system by introducing a central energy management system, which utilizes demand response approach to minimize the cost of the system along with scheduling the operation of the appliances and electrical storages in such a way that grid constraints would not be violated. First, each house will be scheduled individually and send the data to the central controller and then after analyzing the obtained data if the results exceed the defined criteria the central energy management system will perform an optimization to enhance the situation. Simulation results show that the proposed method has decreased the possible problems caused by congestion and improved the performance of the distribution system.