Inside Residential Distributed Generation: A Look of High Frequency Contamination

This paper presents the study of high-frequency voltage contamination on residential installation with photovoltaic generation. Such voltage pollution results relevant high frequency current circulating inside the house wiring. The main reason is that the electronic loads, majoritarian in modern residences, have a capacitor in the front-end, what means, in the connection with the feeder, allowing a low impedance path for the high frequency components. Measurements with real loads and test capacitors allow making the above statement. For small and medium power loads, the high-frequency current has the same order of magnitude of the non-polluted load current. The impact on the behavior of each specific load as well as on the equipment reliability must be investigated. Finally, a different high-frequency voltage background was observed, probably due to similar PV inverters in the neighborhood, spreading through the distribution feeders.