New Controls of Photovoltaic Solar Farms for Transmission and Distribution Applications

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Photovoltaic (PV) solar farms are idle in night with their expensive infrastructure unutilized. A novel technology of utilizing solar farms both in the NIGHT and day as a dynamic reactive power compensator named by us as PV-STATCOM, has been developed in previous Discovery Grant. This was demonstrated on a 10 kW PV solar farm for the FIRST-TIME-IN-THE WORLD in Dec. 2016 in the utility network of Bluewater Power Sarnia, ON. This technology has got 7 granted patents and 11 pending in different countries. This research program aims at developing a near market ready PV-STATCOM technology validated for multi MW solar farms with novel functions, and with optimized energy storage systems. The PV-STATCOM can offer all the functions normally provided by Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) devices (typically costing $50 Million for ±200 MVA rating) at 50-100 times LOWER cost. These grid-support functions include i) improving stability and power transfer in existing transmission lines, thereby avoiding/deferring construction of expensive new transmission lines (about $2.5 Million/km), ii) mitigation of subsynchronous resonance in synchronous generators and wind farms, thus preventing costly damages to generator shafts and wind farm controls, iii) obviating voltage instability and destabilization of critical motors, thus avoiding major financial losses to customers (typically $ 1 Million/hr of shutdown for motors in petrochemical industries), iv) providing combined frequency regulation and power oscillation damping, thus helping avoid system splitting and blackouts, and v) increasing hosting capacity of distribution feeders, thus enabling significantly increased grid connections of PV solar and wind farms.“Smart inverters” is emerging technology for providing real and reactive power controls on PV solar farms, which is rapidly being deployed in North America. This research program also aims at developing PV-STATCOM as a novel field-validated “Smart Inverter” which offers several new smart inverter (FACTS-like) functions, and also conventional smart inverters functions at 50-60 times FASTER speed.PV solar technology is the fastest growing technology worldwide. It is shown that installation of PV-STATCOM controller worth $ 0.5 Million on inverters of an existing solar farm can transform the solar farm into an equivalent STATCOM worth $ 50 Million. Application of PV-STATCOM technology on solar farms can potentially bring: i) Huge savings to Canadian utilities in avoiding installation of expensive FACTS devices (there are more than 30 such SVCs/STATCOMs in Canada already), ii) New revenues making opportunities to Canadian PV solar farms by offering several grid support functions both during NIGHT and in addition to sale of real power in daytime, and iii) New line of business for Canadian inverter manufacturers. This program will train 8 PhD, 2 MESc, 10 MEng and 5 NSERC USRA students.