Research on the efficacy of integrated fuel cell and distribution static synchronous compensator in improving power quality on distribution networks with photovoltaic systems

Abstract

The increased penetration of intermittent energy sources has the potential to cause voltage fluctuation and flicker. Static synchronous compensator has been proven to be one of the solutions to solve this issue. Integrating an energy storage system with a static synchronous compensator can increase its performance for real power compensation. While batteries are the preferred solution for photovoltaic power fluctuation mitigation, fuel cells have several advantages over batteries. Based on literature review, integrating a static synchronous compensator with fuel cells can compensate for the fuel cell's slow response time for transient stability improvement. Hence, this paper presents a model and control scheme of an integrated distribution static synchronous compensator with fuel cell on a distribution network with a grid-connected photovoltaic system. A proportional-integral controller is developed to manipulate the real and reactive power flow for power and voltage regulation. The distribution network is modelled in MATLAB Simulink and the performance of the proposed system for voltage fluctuation and flicker mitigation is evaluated. Results show that the proposed system can reduce flicker levels by more than 80% as well as regulate the voltage on the network at 1.0 p.u.