Enabling high amounts of PV systems in low voltage grids using storage systems

As the business case for home-scaled PV storage systems emerges in Germany, the impact of different control strategies for such systems on the distribution grid has to be evaluated. This paper assesses the economic performance of two different control strategies for PV storage systems (optimization- and rule-based) regarding their ability to minimize grid reinforcement costs, grid losses and PV energy losses accompanied by lower feed-in limits. The results show that an optimization-based control strategy is able to reduce PV energy losses further than a rulebased storage operation. Grid reinforcement costs depend on the limitation of the maximum grid feed-in which is mainly determined by PV systems and not storage operation. However, as smart storage operation allows to minimize PV energy losses for the lower feed-in limits the DSO also benefits as grid reinforcement cost decreases.