Balancing of Low-Voltage Supply Network with a Smart Utility Controller Leveraging Distributed Customer Energy Sources

Dumisani Mtolo (), David Dorrell () and Rudiren Pillay Carpanen ()
Additional contact information
Dumisani Mtolo: Gautrain Management Agency, Midrand 1682, South Africa
David Dorrell: School of Electrical and Information Engineering, The University of the Witwatersrand, Braamfontein, Johannesburg 2000, South Africa
Rudiren Pillay Carpanen: School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, The University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041, South Africa

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 23, 1-30

Abstract: In South Africa, there has been a rapid adoption of solar power, particularly inverter-based solar sources, in low-voltage (LV) networks due to factors such as load shedding, rising electricity costs and greenhouse gas emissions reduction. In residential LV networks, the alignment between solar supply and energy demand is less precise, necessitating larger battery storage systems to effectively utilize solar energy. Residential areas experience peak energy demand in the morning and evening when solar irradiance is limited. As a result, substantial energy storage is important to fully utilize the potential of solar energy. However, increasing inverter-based, customer-generated power creates an imbalance in the utility supply. This is because utility LV supply transformers have three phases, while individual customers have single-phase connections and no load balancing control mechanism. This supply imbalance adversely affects the overall power quality, causing energy losses, damage to devices and other issues. To address these problems, the paper proposes a smart control approach to minimize power imbalances within utility LV supply transformers. The controller uses customer battery storage in residential areas to balance the utility transformer phases. A laboratory model was built to simulate a three-phase low-voltage network with single-phase customers, both with and without a smart controller. The results show that closely monitoring and controlling individual inverters through a central controller can significantly improve the balance of the supply network.

Keywords: unbalanced three-phase supply; inverter control; low-voltage network control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/23/7707/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/23/7707/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:16:y:2023:i:23:p:7707-:d:1285256

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().