Journal
SOLAR ENERGY
Volume 231, Issue -, Pages 516-526Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.solener.2021.11.051
Keywords
Solar photovoltaic; Grid-connected PV; Grid-interactive buildings; Distribution voltage regulation; Flexible load control; Sustainable communities
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This paper presents a co-simulation platform for PV-rich residential communities to facilitate the development and analysis of new voltage regulation strategies. By coordinating building loads across different households, the flexibility of these loads can help reduce the operations of voltage regulators.
One of the major obstacles for deeper solar photovoltaic (PV) utilization is associated with its adverse impact on distribution voltage regulation. This paper presents a co-simulation platform for PV-rich residential communities to facilitate development and analysis of new voltage regulation strategies leveraging the flexible residential loads. The platform achieves co-simulation of high-fidelity EnergyPlus models for residential dwellings, a solar PV model and a power flow model for distribution networks to accommodate holistic assessments of different voltage control approaches. Community-level control strategies are proposed to coordinate the operations of air conditioners and hot water heaters across different households to provide proactive voltage support against volatile solar generation. The control strategies were evaluated with five simulation test cases of a community with 100 residential dwellings, under different control settings and distribution infrastructure. Simulation test results have shown that the voltage regulation strategies using flexible building loads could help reduce operations of step voltage regulators, from 15 tap changes per day to 4. For distribution grids without voltage regulation devices, flexibility of building loads can be leveraged to maintain feeder voltage within limits set forth by ANSI standards, and voltage excursions can be almost fully eliminated through relaxation of thermostat setpoints.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available