REVISTA DYNA ENERGÍA

Key words:

generación fotovoltaica conectada a red, generación distribuida, inversor para conexión a red, redes eléctricas inestables, eficiencia de inversores, grid-tied photovoltaic power generation, distributed generation, grid-tied inverter, unstable networks, performance of inverters

Article type:

ARTICULO DE INVESTIGACION / RESEARCH ARTICLE

Section:

RESEARCH ARTICLES

A 600 Wp grid-tied photovoltaic system (GCFV) was designed and installed by the Renewable Energy Group (GER) in order to study the effects on the low voltage distribution network. The system was installed at the Physics building of the Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales in the city of Corrientes, Argentina. The system is injecting the generated energy to the low voltage network since 2010 and has been monitored thenceforth using different measuring instruments. System features, the methodology adopted to characterize the quality and quantity of energy injected and the evaluation of performance characteristics (according to IEC 61724 standard) for the period between January 2011 and Dicember 2012 are all topics presented in this article. The GCFV system generates a monthly average of active power of about 56 kWh with a THDi lower than 10%, an average power factor equal to 0.93 and an average efficiency in the DC/AC conversion stage equal to 89.4%. During the first 10 months of 2011, changes in the performance ratio (PR) of GCFV are comparable to those reported in literature for other systems, however during the remaining months the PR decreased due to instabilities in the network parameters. It is concluded that systems with these characteristics can efficiently and safely be used to implement DG in Northern Argentina region, being able to improve the quality and supply capacity in the local network as long as inverters suitable to operate on networks presenting instabilities in their characteristic parameters are used.