Voltage and Current Unbalance Reduction in Power Networks with Distributed Generation and Electric Vehicles

Abstract

The current development of prosumer microsources and the expected spread of electric vehicles may cause the appearance of significant current and voltage unbalance in low-voltage (LV) networks. This unbalance, which is an unfavorable phenomenon, may occur when using single-phase photovoltaic (PV) microsources and single-phase home chargers for electric vehicles. This paper presents a proposal for the symmetrization of the LV network using devices for the reconfiguration of phases in the power supply. Both the different locations of these devices and the different objective functions for device implementation are analyzed. The research was carried out on an example LV network, taking into account several variants of the development of PV microsources and home chargers for electric vehicles. The analysis indicates that the appropriate location of phase reconfiguration devices and the use of an appropriate objective function leads to a significant reduction in unfavorable unbalancing in the LV network.