Power Quality Aspects of Solar Power

VOLTAGE UNBALANCE
Voltage unbalance is a power quality phenomenon in a three phase system, in which the rms value of the voltages
or the phase angle between consecutive phases is not equal. The primary source of voltage unbalance at the
distribution voltage level is unbalanced load due to uneven spread of single-phase low-voltage customers over the
three phases. The connection of single-phase PV installations will result in an increase of the voltage unbalance.
Single-phase units can only be expected in low-voltage networks, most likely with domestic and small commercial
customers. There is no fundamental difference in impact between small and large single-phase units; large units are
however less likely to be single phase.

Some three-phase inverters operate as single-phase units for small amounts of produced power. These also
contribute to voltage unbalance, but only for small irradiation.

9.1 Individual units

The connection of a single-phase PV installation will result in the injection of positive, negative, and zero-sequence
current of the same amount. Production of active power Pgen and zero reactive power, will give a current equal to:

= (9.1)

where U is the phase-to-neutral voltage at the point of connection, assuming that the generator is connected phase-
to-neutral. The negative-sequence current injected by the single phase generator is equal to:

= = (9.2)

The negative-sequence current will result in a negative-sequence voltage, the ratio between the voltage and current
being determined by the negative-sequence impedance Z2 at the point of connection.

= = 9.3

The negative-sequence impedance Z2 is the parallel connection of the series impedance of the grid and the shunt
impedance due to local load. The series impedance ZS2 is mainly the impedance of the distribution transformer and
the wires between the distribution transformer and the point of connection. This is shown schematically in Figure 9-1.

Figure 9-1 Negative-sequence impedance seen by a single-phase load.

The shunt impedance ZL2 is mainly determined by the negative-sequence impedance of the load in the neighborhood
of the point-of-connection. Three-phase motors with their low negative-sequence impedance will dominate this
impedance.

9.2 Multiple units at one location

When multiple single-phase generator units are connected to the same feeder, they will most likely be randomly
distributed over the three phases. The spread of the generators over the phases is illustrated in Figure 9-2. A Monte-
Carlo simulation has been done to estimate the probability that a specific phase would contain a certain number of

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generator units. These calculations have been performed when a total of 6 units are connected to the feeder and
when a total of 30 units are connected to the feeder. In both cases, 100 000 simulations were performed to obtain
an estimate of the probabilities. For 6 generators, the number of units connected to one phase varies with 95%
confidence between zero and four. For 30 units, this varies between 5 and 15.

Figure 9-2 Probability distribution function of the number of generator units in one specific phase, for a total of 6
units (left) and for a total of 30 units (right).

With an increasing number of single-phase generator units, the negative-sequence current increases. Note that the
current unbalance (ratio of negative and positive-sequence current) decreases with increasing number of units. What
matters to the grid is the absolute value of the negative-sequence current as this determines the negative-sequence
voltage. Using the above-mentioned Monte-Carlo simulation, the probability distribution function of the negative-
sequence current has been calculated. From this distribution the average value, the standard deviation and the 95-
percentile (the value not exceeded by 95% of the samples) have been calculated and plotted in Figure 9-3. The unit
along the vertical scale is the rated current of one generator. The dotted line is an approximation that will be discussed
later, resulting in (9.4).

Figure 9-3 Negative-sequence current due to multiple single-phase generator units: average (bottom solid line),
average plus standard deviation (upper solid line); 95-percentile (stars); and approximation for the 95-percentile
(dash-dot line).
From a design viewpoint, the 95-percentile value is the most important parameter. When this value is kept below a
certain value, the probability that the negative-sequence current exceeds this value is seen as sufficiently small.
There is no need to use the worst-case (i.e. all units in one phase) in the design. Using the average value on the
other hand would be overly optimistic as there is a rather large probability (somewhere around 50%) that the actual
unbalance is more than the average value. Using the average value as a performance indicator will however allow
much more single-phase generators to be connected before investments in the network would be needed. In the
forthcoming discussion we will however use the 95-percentile as the value setting the limit.

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As the 95-percentile plays an important role in the design, a simple expression for it would be helpful. The following
expression gives a good approximation for the 95-percentile of the negative-sequence current, as was shown in
Figure 9-3.

= · (9.4)
where N is the number of single phase generator units and I the current produced by one unit.

The negative-sequence current due to the unequal spread of the single-phase generators over the three phases
gives a negative-sequence voltage U2 over the negative-sequence impedance Z2. Using (9-4) the negative-sequence
voltage is:

·
= · (9.5)

9.3 Multiple units at multiple locations

A study was performed after the impact of single-phase-connected PV in a rural network in Sweden [1]. The network
is shown in Figure 9-4. This type of network is typical for the Swedish country side where a few houses, spread over
a few hundred meters, are connected to a single distribution transformer.

Figure 9-4 Low-voltage distribution network with six customers (“6-customer network”).

9.3.1 Deterministic approach

The unbalance at all customer locations was calculated for different locations of PV. Some of the results are shown
in Table 9-1 toTable 9-4. Table 9-1and Table 9-2 present the VU (in %) at the six customer nodes due to different
numbers of PVIs connected to the same phase: Table 9-1 for customers with solar panels at their own location and
Table 9-2 for customers without solar panels. The first column in the tables indicates the total number of PVIs
connected to the low-voltage grid. Table 9-3 and Table 9-4 give the results when the inverters are spread over the
phases. In that case, the connection of the first single-phase inverter gives the highest VU. These results are related
to the 6-customer network, but the same behavior has been observed in other networks.

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Table 9-1 Voltage unbalance (in %) at the six customer nodes for customers with solar panels; all inverters in the
same phase
# CB1 CB2 CB3 CB4 CB5 CB6

1 0.80 0.56 0.69 1.00 0.46 0.90

2 1.21 0.98 1.08 1.37 0.86 1.27

3 1.61 1.39 1.47 1.77 1.27 1.67

4 2.00 1.78 1.87 2.16 1.67 2.07

5 2.40 2.18 2.27 2.56 2.07 2.47

6 2.83 2.61 2.67 2.96 2.48 2.87

Table 9-2 Voltage unbalance (in %) at the six customer nodes for customers without solar panels; all inverters in the
same phase
# CB1 CB2 CB3 CB4 CB5 CB6

1 0.43 0.43 0.40 0.40 0.40 0.40

2 0.83 0.82 0.80 0.81 0.81 0.81

3 1.23 1.23 1.20 1.21 1.21 1.21

4 1.30 1.63 1.60 1.62 1.62 1.62

5 2.06 2.06 2.01 2.03 2.02 2.03

Table 9-3 Voltage unbalance (in %) at the six customer nodes for customers with solar panels; all inverters in a
different phase
# CB1 CB2 CB3 CB4 CB5 CB6

1 0.80 0.56 0.69 1.00 0.46 0.90

2 0.52 0.38-0.53 0.45-1.17 0.67-0.98 0.41 0.88

3 0.42 0.17 0.30 0.62 0.06 0.51

Table 9-4 Voltage unbalance (in %) at the six customer nodes for customers without solar panels; all inverters in a
different phase
# CB1 CB2 CB3 CB4 CB5 CB6

1 0.40-0.45 0.40-0.45 0.40 0.40 0.40 0.40

2 0.37-0.52 0.37 0.37 0.38 0.38 0.38

3 0-0.06 0-0.06 0.00 0.01 0.01 0.01

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The worst case (six single-phase inverters in the same phase) gives up to almost 3% voltage unbalance. The worst
case for a customer without PV gives a voltage unbalance slightly over 2%. When single-phase inverters are spread
over the phases, the first one to be connected gives the largest voltage unbalance, up to about 1% in this case.

9.3.2 Stochastic approach

Next, random connection of inverters over the phases and at random locations was studied, by means of a Monte-
Carlo simulation. For a fixed number of customers with PV, all of 6-kW size and all with one single-phase inverter,
the probability distribution of the voltage unbalance was calculated. Figure 9-5 shows that, for three customers with
PV installation, the voltage unbalance will be less than 1% with 65% to 90% confidence and less than 2% with 100%
confidence. Note that the voltage unbalance calculated here is the worst situation, i.e. all inverters injecting 6 kW of
power at the same time.

To obtain Figure 9-6, the analysis has been repeated for five PV installations. Here, the voltage unbalance is less
than 1% with around 50% probability (35 to 65% depending on the connection point) and less than 2% with 90 to
100% probability.

The hosting capacity (or, the PV penetration where investments are needed) depends on the risk that the network
operator is willing to take. When only 1% allocation is available for single-phase PVIs, already three units will be too
much. But when a small probability of exceeding 2% VU is acceptable, even five single-phase PVIs become
acceptable. The information contained in figures such as this (for specific networks or for typical networks) can assist
the network operator in making decisions about the need for measures against excessive voltage unbalance levels.

Figure 9-5 Probability distribution function of the voltage unbalance for three inverters at random busbars and
phases in a 6-customer network; the different colors refer to different customers

Figure 9-6 Probability distribution function of the voltage unbalance for five inverters at random busbars and
phases in a 6-customer network; the different colors refer to different customers

For each of the customers, expected value, 90th and 95th percentile are calculated from the probability distributions
functions as in Figure 9-5 and Figure 9-6. For example, for five customers with PV installations (Figure 9-6) the 90th
percentiles are: 1.47%; 1.50%; 1.54%; 1.72%; 1.78% and 1.85% for the six customers. The mean and maximum
value is calculated over all customers for the expected values, 90th percentiles and 95th percentiles per customer.
For the 90th percentile of the five-PVI example above, the average value is 1.64% and the maximum value 1.85%.

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The latter two values are referred to as U2_90_mean and U2_90_max, respectively. The calculations were performed
for one through six customers with PV. The results are shown in Figure 9-7as a function of the number of customers
(number of single phase PV inverters), where U2_exp_mean is the mean over all customers of the expected value
of the voltage unbalance, etc. The worst-case voltage unbalance (Table 9-1) was shown to be almost 3%, but
expected values (for 6 customers with PV) are only around 1%. High-percentiles (90th and 95th) of the voltage
unbalance are between 1.5% and 2%. The non-uniform increase for some of the curves is due to the small number
of inverters: the 90th and 95th percentile for small number of inverters include some of the worst cases with all
inverters in one phase; with increasing number of inverters the worst case becomes less likely and hence the 90th
or 95th percentiles are seen to sometimes decrease.

The calculations were repeated for a low-voltage distribution network with 28 customers, with the results shown in
Figure 9-8.

2.5

2.0
Voltage Unbalance in %

1.5

1.0

U2_exp_mean U2_90_mean
0.5
U2_95_mean U2_exp_max
U2_90_max U2_95_max
0.0
1 2 3 4 5 6

Number of PV Inverters

Figure 9-7 Voltage unbalance versus the number of customers with PV in the 6-customer network

2
1.8 U2_exp_mean U2_90_mean
U2_95_mean U2_exp_max
1.6
U2_90_max U2_95_max
Voltage Unbalance in %

1.4
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27

Number of PV Inverters

Figure 9-8 Voltage unbalance (%) versus the number of customers with PV in the 28-customer network

9.4 Hosting capacity

9.4.1 Individual units
From (9-3) the hosting capacity can be calculated: i.e. the largest single-phase generator that does not result in an
unacceptable value for the negative-sequence voltage. Assume that the maximum-permissible value of the negative-
sequence voltage is equal to · ⁄√3 where Unom is the nominal phase to phase voltage. The lowest voltage
at the point-of-connection for which this criterion should hold is equal to · ⁄√3 . The hosting capacity is given
by the following expression:

= · · (9.6)

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