STRI’s Hosting Capacity methodology can be used to identify the maximum amount of new production or consumption that can be connected to a system without resulting in an unacceptable reduction of power quality, or adversely impacting other customers.

Performance indicators can be e.g. disturbance levels of slow voltage variations, overloading or harmonics.

Knowing the actual bottlenecks, which are often not of a technical nature, allows for optimal use of resources to increase the Hosting Capacity. By investigating how different performance indicators limit the amount of renewables that can be integrated to the grid, bottlenecks can be identified. This can help with network planning and investment decisions which will in turn lead to improvements in capacity, flexibility and power quality.

Update 2017-06-16

The work package has written two papers that were presented at the CIRED conference in Scotland in June; Performance indicators for quantifying the ability of the grid to host renewable electricity production and Using measurements to increase the accuracy of hosting capacity calculations.

The first one proposes a comprehensive set of performance indicators that should be used when evaluating the hosting capacity of a system. Descriptions are given for the most relevant phenomena and how they should be quantified and measured.

The second one has compared five different methods for calculating the hosting capacity in a distribution grid. The results show a large difference in the obtained hosting capacity depending on the method used by measuring more, a significantly larger amount of renewable energy can be hosted in a grid. These initial findings in WP5 contribute to the overall project goal of enabling a larger share of renewable energy in the grid.

WP Leader:
Susanne Ackeby
susanne.ackeby@stri.se
STRI, Sweden