Computation of Power Loss in Utility Scale Solar PV Projects Due to Power Limitation and Controls
Abstract
With more and more renewables being integrated into conventional grids, the grid codes and connectivity requirements are becoming stringent for the distributed sources of generation. As installed solar capacities are increasing, the pressure to overcome the intermittent nature and emphasis to behave like a fixed load power plant is also increasing. This has led to the governing of power from wind and solar plants by various tools and technologies. In the last few years, asset real time performance monitoring has become the norm and organizations have built prediction models to monitor and evaluate their assets’ financial returns. This paper covers the common types of controls used in utility scale solar PV projects and various methodologies used for computation of losses due to the controls at Solar Inverters and at grid interconnection point. The current study also compares the methodology used in PVsyst (solar PV energy simulation software used in industry) and real time loss estimations due to these controls. For analysis and evaluation, data from multiple utility scale solar PV assets in India have been considered.
Keywords
Asset monitoring, Performance evaluation, Inverter power control, Clipping loss, Power curtailment losses, Grid limitation losses, Power plant controller, Pvsyst, Inverter loss over nominal inverter power, Power governance.