Power Quality Investigation of Distribution Networks with High Penetration of Solar Energy

In recent decades, solar energy has become one of the most important renewable energy sources. Its penetration into distribution networks arises various issues, especially for power quality such as voltage fluctuations, harmonics and flickers. Thus, the integration of solar energy could initiate problems for equipment in power system. In this paper, the power quality issues are investigated in distribution networks comprising high penetration of solar energy sources. This includes the impact of climate with various penetration levels. The standard IEEE 13-bus system is considered as the investigated network. The entire system is modeled using MATLAB Simulink software. In order to evaluate the power quality, the system is tested under several conditions such as different high-penetration levels of solar energy, load variation and climate variation. The results show that the effect of load variation, with high penetration of solar energy, has high fluctuations whereas the climate variation was quite stable as the photovoltaic panels have been connected at the grid connection bus.