A New Remote Tap Position Estimation Approach for Open-Delta Step-Voltage Regulator in a Photovoltaic Integrated Distribution Network

With the rapid development of photovoltaic (PV) technology, more utility-scale PV systems are being integrated into rural areas where abundant and low-cost land is available. In these areas, step-voltage regulators (SVRs) with an open-delta configuration are widely used for voltage regulation. Howev...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on power systems 2018-07, Vol.33 (4), p.4433-4443
Main Authors: Bai, Feifei, Yan, Ruifeng, Saha, Tapan Kumar, Eghbal, Daniel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Estimation
Monitoring
Open-delta step voltage regulator
photovoltaic
Power system reliability
Regulators
Reliability
tap position estimation
unbalanced distribution network
Voltage control
Voltage measurement
voltage variation
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Summary:With the rapid development of photovoltaic (PV) technology, more utility-scale PV systems are being integrated into rural areas where abundant and low-cost land is available. In these areas, step-voltage regulators (SVRs) with an open-delta configuration are widely used for voltage regulation. However, since SVRs were initially designed for tackling slow and smooth load variations, frequent PV output fluctuations can cause excessive tap changes. Moreover, rural communication facilities are normally expensive and underdeveloped, so only limited parameters are recorded with low resolution and reliability. Thus, much needed tap information cannot be properly monitored in a cost-effective way. In contrast, a downstream load center or utility-scale PV site is commonly well equipped with modern sensors and data acquisition systems, which provide the possibility for tap evaluation. Therefore, this paper proposes a new remote tap position estimation approach to accurately assess the upstream tap positions of open-delta SVRs from downstream measurements. Furthermore, the proposed approach is firmly validated through field testing under the support of the local utility and PV plant owner. This novel method not only enables reliable tap position monitoring with high precision for utilities to research PV-SVR interaction, but also provides valuable information to PV owners for correctly analyzing downstream voltage performance.
ISSN:0885-8950
1558-0679
DOI:10.1109/TPWRS.2017.2776311