Abstract
According to the government's policy to demonstrate and expand the renewable energy sources, distributed generators such as PV and WP are installed and operated in distribution systems. However, there are many issues related to power quality problems including over voltage and under voltage of customers. In order to overcome these problems, the electric power company have installed a step voltage regulator (SVR) in primary feeders interconnected with distributed generators, and also have established the technical guidelines for the distributed generators to stabilize the customer voltages in distribution systems. However, it is difficult to maintain the customer voltages within allowable limit. Therefore, this paper reviews the problems of voltage control by SVR in a distribution systems interconnected with a large amount of PV systems, and proposes characteristics of operating range and voltage control limit of the small hydropower generators. Also, with the estimation of the influence to the power system voltages from the voltage control mode of generators, this paper proposes the optimal voltage control algorithm of the small hydropower generators. By programming the proposed algorithm into control simulator of exciter, it is confirmed that the proposed algorithm can contribute the voltage stabilization in distribution systems interconnected with large scaled PV systems.