Statistical analysis of the smoothing effect for photovoltaic systems in a large area

Abstract

A generation fluctuation of a Photovoltaic (PV) system is one of the most important grid integration issues with dissemination of large amount of PV systems. In grid integration issues, the short time generation fluctuation of PV system such as from a few seconds to a few minutes influences the demand-supply balance of the utility grid. PV systems are, however, installed as a distributed system, and in fact residential PV systems have been dominated in the Japanese market and installation capacity. In the circumstance, the generation fluctuations of many PV systems cancel each other to yield the less-fluctuated total PV system generation in a large area. This phenomenon has been called as "a smoothing effect". In this paper, the smoothing effect of PV systems in large area, around 100 km radius area, is evaluated by means of three fluctuation parameter, maximum deviation width, deviation of moving average, and Furrier analysis to get its statistical feature. © 2010 The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.