Technical assessment of electric utility-interactive residential photovoltaic power systems

This work aims to evaluate the impact that the future widespread use of residential utility-interactive Photovoltaic (PV) systems would have on the utility operation. The meteorological conditions at the installation site, PV performance, house number and load profiles are the main factors affecting these issues. Therefore, a proposed algorithm has been introduced here to assess the impact of these factors on utility-interactive residential PV systems on an electric utility distribution feeder. This algorithm based on computer simulation of a utility feeder to determine the effect of operating both of distributed and centralized residential PV systems on measurements of voltage and losses on the feeder and power at the substation. The proposed algorithm is applied numerically to develop the effect of operating residential PV systems on an Egyptian utility feeder voltage, losses and the power demand at the substation. Also, the effect of PV systems installation site and number of homes have PV-generation on Egyptian utility operation are developed. The results are more useful and encouraging for integrated residential PV systems with electric utilities. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.