Experimental verification of decentralized control approach to power curtailment instruction problem for PV generation plants with storage

PV (photovoltaic) generation has experienced the most growth among the renewable energy sources in the last several years, and the interconnection capacity of PV generations may continue to increase. However, more recently special problem in Japan, the capacity of qualified PV generation facilities exceeds the allowable interconnection capacity determined by each power grid company. This fact is recognized as a critical issue for reliable operations of power grids, and it will be enforced by law that the power grid company can announce the output power curtailment instruction signal to the PV generation plants. An output power curtailment essentially means wasting potential solar energy. Operating methodologies for the PV generation plant that can reduce the amount of wasted energy are needed to be developed. This paper considers the PV generation plant equipped with the energy storage and investigates decentralized management of power conditioning systems which are used to interconnect the PV and storage system into the grid. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is evaluated through the real physical experiments.