A Fundamental Study on the Transient Stability of Power Systems with High Shares of Solar PV Plants

The last decade has seen an immense growth in renewable energy sources such as solar photovoltaic (PV) plants due to environmental concerns. Due to this rapid growth, solar PV plants are starting to have a larger influence on power system stability and thus their dynamic behavior cannot be ignored in stability studies. The lack of well-established models and parameter sets is the primary reason solar PV plants are not modeled with dynamic characteristics. This paper presents a method to define a standard parameter set for representing large-scale and aggregated solar PV plants in stability studies from the perspective of the transmission system operator (TSO). The method takes into account primarily the conditions provided in the grid connection requirements; for illustrative purposes, the connection requirements of the Netherlands are used. Additionally, a relationship defined as short-circuit current (SCC) PV ratio is proposed to estimate the effect of solar PV plants on transient stability. To illustrate the workings of the proposed ratio, the transmission network of the TenneT TSO B.V. in the Netherlands is used. The analysis demonstrated that high values of SCC PV ratio are an indicator that solar PV plants affect the transient stability while low values of SCC PV ratio showed that solar PV plants have minimal effect on the transient stability. Additionally, methods to improve the transient stability are provided which include limiting the operation regions of critical generators, increasing short-circuit ratio by adding a synchronous condenser or static compensator (STATCOM) and decreasing the reactance between the critical synchronous generator and faulted bus.