An Assessment Procedure of Distribution Network Reliability Considering Photovoltaic Power Integration

As photovoltaic (PV) generation has been one of the major renewable energy sources around the world, its PV capacity has also increased. When the large-scale PV systems are integrated into the distribution network, the complexity of the assessment process of the distribution network reliability will increase hazardously. In order to accurately assess this reliability in the distribution network combined with the PV generation, a reliability assessment procedure is proposed. In order to accurately evaluate the impact of the failure of conventional power equipment on reliability, the time-varying failure rate of conventional power equipment is modeled, taking into account the aging period. Then, in order to accurately evaluate the reliability improvement with PV systems integration, the new procedure is proposed highlighting the following contributions: 1) five new indices are added. 2) PV output is modeled so that not only the radiation intensity but also the failure and degradation of PV modules are represented. 3) time-varying islanding operation is considered and integrated. A case study using real-life distribution network topology and data in China is applied to verify that the newly proposed reliability indices display more sensitivity, and the proposed procedure significantly improves the accuracy of the reliability assessment.