Anais da Conferência Brasileira sobre Qualidade da Energia Elétrica
Anais da XIV Conferência Brasileira sobre Qualidade da Energia Elétrica

Nowadays, there is a growth in integration of small-scale photovoltaic (PV) modules to low voltage (LV) distribution systems. If this integration is not properly planned some power quality operational constraints can be violated such as over/undervoltage, voltage unbalance and overload of transformers. Thus, it is important to relate these power quality indicators to the system PV hosting capacity, aiming to reach correct operation of the distribution system through the maximization of this capacity, even for high penetration level of PV modules. In this paper, this is carried out through a proposed methodology which consists in applying Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to search optimal power factor for each one of the PV modules in the system for practical values of the substation bus voltage. For each voltage, the method tests scenarios consisting of PV sizes and locations, irradiance profile and loads. For all of these factors, whole range of practical values is taken into account in order to obtain the best power factor set. IEEE European Low Voltage Test Feeder was considered to validate the proposed methodology and the scenarios were generated by Monte Carlo Simulation. Through the proposed method, it was possible to improve the voltage profile of the distribution system and reduce the number of scenarios which violate this technical constraint.