Solar Enablement Initiative in Australia: Report on Efficiently Identifying Critical Cases for Evaluating the Voltage Impact of Large PV Investment

Abstract: The increasing quantity of PV generation connected to distribution networks is creating challenges in maintaining and controlling voltages in those distribution networks. Determining the maximum hosting capacity for new PV installations based on the historical data is an essential task for distribution networks. Analyzing all historical data in large distribution networks is impractical. Therefore, this paper focuses on how to time efficiently identify the critical cases for evaluating the voltage impacts of the new large PV applications in medium voltage (MV) distribution networks. A systematic approach is proposed to cluster medium voltage nodes based on electrical adjacency and time blocks. MV nodes are clustered along with the voltage magnitudes and time blocks. Critical cases of each cluster can be used for further power flow study. This method is scalable and can time efficiently identify cases for evaluating PV investment on medium voltage networks.