24th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference, 21-25 September 2009, Hamburg, Germany

FUTURE SCADA REQUIREMENTS FOR PV SYSTEMS

Jan Hanno Carstens, Stefan Berg Solon SE Am Studio 16, 12489 Berlin, Germany, Tel.: +49 (0) 30 81879 0, jan.carstens@solon.com

ABSTRACT: Due to size and proportion PV power plants are more and more in focus regarding their technical behavior in public grids. As a result Transmission System Operators are defining new rules for PV farms with respect to power quality and controllability. Furthermore, investors of PV plants need to get optimized and compacted information of their investments. In addition, service and operators need to get highest remote control of PV plants. As a result there are several requirements for future SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) systems which differ from todays monitoring systems regarding structure and complexity. Keywords: SCADA, Monitoring, Grid Control, Service

PURPOSE

In the PV market and its different shareholders there exists several different requirements for future SCADA systems which differ from todays monitoring systems regarding structure and complexity. Content of this contribution is to summarize requirements from different views.

REQUIREMENTS

2.1 Investors Investors of PV plants need to get optimized, reliable and compacted information of their investments. Their need is a clear visualization of their investments which is focused on the commercial status and management ratios. Visualization of performance ratio and targetperformance comparison should be prepared. 2.2 Service and park operator functionalities Service and operators need to get highest remote control of PV plants. Their requirement is to get a status overview and precise reporting as well as a tool for detailed remote control and remote failure analysis of the PV farm devices. As it is common in e.g. grid operation facilities the overview of service and park operators needs to have control room capability all observed stations at one view with one central login. Alerts need to be visualized, whereas deeper device access should be possible via one mouse click within an intuitive and efficient user interface. All in all following requirements have been defined by service and park operators: one central login control room capability intuitive and easy operation browser based information (at user desk no additional software installation required) Graphical User Interface (GUI) designed under usability aspects required information as PR, weather, power, technical status at a glance easy comparison of different PV farms subsidiary park control remote access from anywhere at any time

bidirectional communication full components control devices remote data access (converters, DAS, trackers, weather stations, transformers, ) readability of voltage current, tracker angle, weather, grid connection status, remote component control (safety, active and reactive power, ) high reliability high resistance vs. environmental effects (wide temperature range, moisture, ) failsafe easy commissioning central data storage with decentral data buffer quick response time automatic event and error report via Email, SMS, secure and safe fast data exchange industrial components integration of existing PV farms

2.3 Transmission System Operator functionalities Due to size and proportion PV power plants are more and more in focus regarding their technical behavior in public grids. As a result Transmission System Operators (TSO) are defining new rules for PV farms with respect to power quality and controllability. These are for instance the limitation of active power for frequency control or the control of reactive power for voltage regulation. In addition, renewable energy plants need to give contribution to grid stability after grid faults, usually named as Fault Ride Trough (FRT). With more details grid operator requirements regarding PV farm SCADA properties are: meeting new grid requirements (e.g. Germany: BDEW-guidelines) to control solar power plants active power control reactive power control fault-ride-through capability standardized and open communication interfaces IEC 61850-7-40 or other communication protocols to grid operators (optional) 2.4 Project engineering functionalities To minimize efforts, realization time (time to grid) and to increase quality as well as reliability during

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24th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference, 21-25 September 2009, Hamburg, Germany

engineering of new power plants it is obvious to use standardized components and a modular SCADA system. Project engineering requirements are: system modularity standardized components used for all applications (systems and devices with CE as well as UL certified components) flexible SCADA-Topology support of different standard field buses open for different broadcasting technologies as wired and wireless (UMTS, Satellite) easy installation of new components resp. device types easy integration of new products easy implementation of new power plants into data base and GUI extendable to new requirements and certainly: Low costs

without requiring additional software installation on the remote computer, means: Required is the use of conventional browsers installed on each computer. One approach how a homepage can look like is given in Figure 2. After login process the user gets an overview of all observed PV farms in his responsibility. General PV farm status as well as overall commercial and technical information are visualized.

REALIZATION

One possible approach is a realization as shown in Figure 1. HMI stands for Human Machine Interface as computer based GUI as well in the field as also web based via remote access.

Figure 2: GUI example of SCADA homepage

SUMMARY

The required investments of PV farms and their increasing power contribution to the grid cause new requirements of SCADA systems, different to those monitoring systems as they have been used since first house owners needed visualization of their installations. In particular control of PV farms and its devices by TSOs or operators require a SCADA solution which needs to be in hand of system suppliers for being able to realize and optimize the interactions between operator commands and devices without making compromises regarding safety or system stability.

Figure 1: SCADA structure In this approach each PV farm consists of one PV farm central Monitoring Connection (CMC) and optionally different Distributed Monitoring Connection units (DMC), which connect the CMC to devices as converters, trackers, weather stations, switchgears, The Central Monitoring Administration (CMA) is the central server platform connected to the different PV farms as well as to the HMI. TSOs are permitted to connect to the PV farm via internet using either standardized protocols as e.g. IEC 61850-7-40 or others. Great importance needs to be attached to the execution of the HMI/GUI. A state of the art GUI needs to be intuitive, fast in reaction time, giving the required information without information overload. And all this

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