Experimental Evaluation of PV Inverter Performance during Islanding and Frequency Disturbance Conditions

Abstract:

This document is the final report for the project titled 'Experimental Evaluation of PV Inverter Performance during Islanding and Frequency Disturbance Conditions'.

Testing of five low voltage photovoltaic inverters has been performed at the PNDC to determine:

Inverters were tested individually and in pairs. All tests were successful in the sense that all inverters tripped during an island while remaining stable during grid disturbances of 1Hz/s rate-of-change-of-frequency (RoCoF) and 5.5° voltage vector shift.

Changes in active and reactive power output of some of the inverters were observed during these events. Active power output reduction was observed for the ABB inverter under test for events of at least 0.7Hz/s over a 1.5Hz frequency band. The reduction lasted for around 1s. Momentary reactive power changes were symptomatic of all transformer-less inverters (i.e. SMA and ABB inverters) during RoCoF events.

1. Introduction
2. Test Setup
3. Testing Results
4. Conclusions
5. References

• Appendix A - Graphs of Category 1 Test Measurements
• Appendix B - Graphs of Category 2 Test Measurements
• Appendix C - Graphs of Category 3 Test Measurements

Publication Year:

2015

Publisher:

Ofgem

DOI:

No DOI minted

Author(s):

University of Strathcylde