Distributed PV Penetration Impact Analysis on Transmission System Voltages using Co-Simulation

With the growing penetrations of distributed energy resources (DERs), it is imperative to evaluate their impacts on transmission system operations. In this paper, an iteratively coupled transmission and distribution (T&D) co-simulation framework is employed to study the impacts of increasing penetrations of distribution-connected photovoltaic (PV) systems on transmission system voltages. The co-simulation framework introduces iterative coupling and unbalanced transmission system analysis that help accurately replicate the standalone T&D system results without resorting to the computational challenge of developing large-scale standalone T&D models. The integrated T&D systems are evaluated for multiple PV deployment scenarios based on randomly generated PV locations and sizes. A test system is simulated using the IEEE-9 bus transmission system model integrated at each load point with three EPRI's Ckt-24 distribution feeder models. The results are thoroughly validated using a standalone T&D system model simulated in OpenDSS.