Key Experiences to Date
The past decade has seen a range of challenges for Australian distribution networks as they
face the challenges of aging assets and peak demand growth. Recent rapid distributed PV
deployment comes within this complex and changing context. This report attempts to focus
on the PV-related issues, but these issues are often difficult to separate from other
distribution network issues, such as the issues associated with high peak demand from airconditioning.
Table 11 below summarizes Ergon Energy╆s experience to date with PV issues and current
and proposed strategies for managing any adverse past or potential impacts. The
information is from interviews conducted with Ergon Energy employees and data collected
for this report. The main issue experienced by Ergon Energy due to high penetrations of PV
has been voltage related. None of the other potential power quality issuesをsuch as reverse
power flow, power factor distortion, or harmonicsをare currently of significant concern.
Protection staff, however, raised network stability concerns in relation to islanding, though
there is no evidence of this having occurred to date. All instances of voltage issues that have
arisen have been addressed by Ergon Energy, and the company continues to trial and,
when appropriate, introduce new technologies and procedures for both mitigating current
voltage issues and avoiding new problems as PV capacity on Ergon Energy╆s network
increases