It’s Time for Utilities to Plan for Disruptive Solar PV Impacts

Many utility executives consider PV-related power quality and other PV-related issues as something of a “back-burner” item given the number of current PV installations on their systems. However, new Smart Grid Research Consortium forecasting models and analysis indicate that these planning issues should be considered with some urgency to inform utility PV policies and programs and to prepare for dealing with concentrations of PV systems on certain portions of distribution systems.

While PV installations are still a relatively small percentage of the total utility customer base at most utilities, they tend to be geographically highly concentrated with potentially large impacts in certain ZIP areas, substations and along individual feeders. Heavy saturations of PV along feeders create power quality issues, asset life degradation due to excessive regulator and capacitor bank switching, and other problems.