Distributed Cooperative ON/OFF Control of Photovoltaic Generation Systems*

:This paper focuses on photovoltaic generation systems where multiple PV generators are connected to each other via communication channels. One of important problems for such systems is to suppress the fluctuation of PV outputs due to weather changes. The existing work proposed an approach which determines whether or not each PV generator supplies electric power, i.e., ON/OFF mode in order to maintain the power supply and demand balance. However, this approach cannot achieve the local generation of electric power for local consumption. Motivated by this, this paper tackles the problem to achieve (i) the power supply and demand balance and (ii) the local generation for local consumption by controlling ON/OFF modes of PV generators. Then, we propose a simple distributed controller as a solution to the problem.