SgurrEnergy - Customer Case Study

High penetration of solar PV energy fed into an electrical grid brings its share of challenges making the grid volatile which requires stabilizing variable energy. This presentation addresses one such challenge, of voltage profile improvement with reactive power compensation at the point of interconnection. A solar PV plant is rated in terms of power (either AC or DC) and is typically not rated for their reactive counterparts (MVAr). IEEE 1547/UL 1741 compliant inverters will typically not have reactive power capability and operate with a unity power factor. Although modern inverters have a capacity to supply reactive power in the range of +0.9 lead/-0.9 lag, the PV plant is rated based on the AC power supplied by the inverter at unity PF. Operational data sourced from various plants in India suggest that a typical utility-scale PV plant provides reactive energy in the range of 7% to 10%. This leads to an inherent error in the per-unit cost calculation, as when the inverter providing the reactive power, the active power is hampered. This paper showcases a cost-to-benefit analysis of various scenarios, such as unity power.