Paper presented to the 3rd Southern African Solar Energy Conference, South Africa, 11-13 May, 2015.
Integrating variable generation sources such as utility-scale
photovoltaic (PV) plants into the electric grid is desirable with
the increasing quest for cleaner sources of electric power
generation and reducing cost of utility-scale PV. As a result,
solar market in the United States has more than doubled over
the past two to three years, but looking ahead, systemic
challenges to growth loom both in the near term. Real-time grid
operators are especially concerned about large-scale PV
systems operating under cloudy conditions and large
disturbances. This paper provides an overview of the
computational and optimization research carried out at the
Real-Time Power and Intelligent Systems Laboratory to
address some of the grid operational concerns with high levels
of PV penetrations.
