Abstract- This paper investigates the operation and protection issues on distribution systems with
high penetration of residential PV systems. Residential PV systems represent small scale recourse
and therefore they have different impacts on a distribution circuit than larger scale resources.
The paper considers a typical residential distribution system and shows that determining the fault
current profile and voltage variations on such systems becomes more challenging. However, the
impacts on system protection and voltage variation are not sever on such system, and thus, high
level penetration can be accommodated provided that proper revisions are made to the protection
and voltage control shemes.