Increasing the Photovoltaic Hosting Capacity in Autonomous Grids and Microgrids via Enhanced Priority-List Schemes and Storage

Abstract

European Union has seen a rapid increase in renewable energy sources during the last decade. The variability and uncertainty caused by the increased penetrations of renewable generation must be properly considered in day-ahead unit commitment to retain the stable operation of conventional power plants. In this work, we present an enhanced method to determine the hosting capacity of photovoltaic energy in an autonomous grid. Based on optimal unit commitment schedules derived from priority list-schemes, we examine the potential of increasing the hosting capacity performing annual simulations for different scenarios in the presence of electricity storage. According to the obtained results, the application of storage eliminates the reliability expenses of load shedding and spinning reserve deficits. Hence, the actual hosting capacity is appropriately retrieved based on the renewable generation curtailment during each case study. However, sustainable solutions are achieved at higher penetration levels, reaching a near of 20% with respect to photovoltaic systems. The proposed solution could be efficiently utilized to determine the photovoltaic hosting capacity of microgrids in islanded or interconnected mode.