Effect of distributed solar energy generation on Uganda’s electricity grid stability

Abstract

Solar energy technology provides power and is only used when there is availability of the resource. However, large amount of solar energy is difficult to integrate into the grid because its availability is constantly changing and uncertain. The assessment aimed at establishing to what extent it would improve the solar integration capacity of the grid. Generation possibilities like synchronization and asynchronous variations with no battery storage were evaluated using MATLAB Simulink. The grid voltage, grid current, real power, grid frequency and reactive power were monitored for the generation scenarios. For the scenarios of asynchronous generation, the grid behaved in the same way as though the generation was lumped at one location. This was a consistent observation since the reactive power support was still coming from the base hydro-generation plant. In the case of the synchronized distributed generation, 60 MW and 10 MW reactive power was still available on the grid. Synchronization can be used to integrate solar plants