Distribution Grid Integration of Photovoltaic Systems in Germany – Implications on Grid Planning and Grid Operation

Photovoltaic is the most dispersed renewable energy source in Germany, typically interconnected to low and medium voltage systems. In recent years, cost-intensive grid reinforcements had to be undertaken all across Germany's distribution grids in order to increase their hosting capacity for these photovoltaic installations. This paper presents an overview on research results which show that photovoltaic itself can provide ancillary services to reduce its cost of interconnection. Especially the provision of reactive power turned out to be a technically effective and economically efficient method to increase a grid's hosting capacity for photovoltaic capacity. Different reactive power control methods were investigated, revealing significant differences with regards to their grid operation implications. Business cases for residential-scale photovoltaic applications have shifted from feed-in-tariff based active power feed-in to self-consumption. However, increasing the photovoltaic self-consumption by additional battery-storage systems is still not economically reliable in Germany. (author)