Evaluation of Hosting Capacity Increase Using Smart Inverter Volt-VAr and Volt-Watt Functions

As the number of residential photovoltaic (PV) systems increase on distribution grids, utilities must evaluate the impacts of distributed energy resources (DER). The main impacts reported in the literature due to high penetration of residential PV systems are overvoltages and thermal violations of transformers and conductors. To overcome these impacts, smart inverters provide control functions such as Volt-VAr and Volt-Watt that allow residential PV generation to act in coordination with the distribution grid, managing voltage at the point of common coupling (PCC). This article discusses how these smart inverter control functions can help increase the hosting capacity (HC) of a typical urban feeder, mitigating the problems caused by the high penetration of residential PV systems.