The effects of photovoltaic electricity injection into microgrids: Combination of Geographical Information Systems, multicriteria decision methods and electronic control modeling

• Geographical Information Systems can be used as a support to classify the viable locations for photovoltaic facilities.
• Multicriteria decision methods are useful tools to choose the optimal locations for photovoltaic systems.
• Variations of photovoltaic power injected into the grid have been calculated for the optimum locations.
• Grid stabilization can be achieved within 500 ms with electronic control strategies.

This article presents a model to calculate the impact on the grid of the injection of electricity generated from photovoltaic systems. The methodology combines the use of Geographical Information System tools to classify the optimal locations for the installation of photovoltaic systems with the calculation of the impact into microgrids of the electricity generated in such locations. The case study is focused on Murcia region, in South-east Spain, and on medium size photovoltaic systems. The locations have been selected from a Geographical Information System database including several parameters, and evaluated and classified using a fuzzy version of the multicriteria decision method called Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution. In order to obtain the weights for the criteria used in the evaluation, the Analytic Hierarchy Process has been used. Finally, using meteorological data from a small set of possible locations, the impact on the grid arising from the injection of power generated from photovoltaic systems that are connected to the grid via a module implementing different control electronic strategies has been calculated. Different electronic control strategies have been modeled to demonstrate that stabilization of the electrical parameters of a microgrid can be obtained within 500 ms in all cases, even when a relatively large power surge, or slower variations, are injected into the grid from the medium size photovoltaic systems.