Reducing the Number of Central Inverters of a Photovoltaic Plant Using Medium-Voltage Capacitor Banks

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of Medium-Voltage (MV) capacitor banks on the number of central inverters of grid-connected Photovoltaic (PV) plants. All generators including renewable energy sources must meet the Intermit Renewable Resource (IRR)–Transmission Interconnection Code (TIC). To comply with this code, the number of central inverters of the grid-connected PV plant must be increased, which leads to additional costs. In this paper, three cases of a 200-MW gridconnected PV plant were investigated. These cases are with and without increasing the number of the central inverters; while the third case is by adding MV capacitor banks to meet the grid code requirements. In this paper, calculations have been performed using ETAP software for all cases. The P-Q capability curves have been discussed for all cases.