Summary

Australia is leading the world in the adoption of rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems with almost 1 in 3 houses having the technology. But similar to other countries where solar PV is becoming more common, distribution companies in Australia have faced and continue to face multiple technical challenges (from voltage rise issues to asset congestion) to facilitate more residential solar PV installations.

This talk will present the different strategies that Australian distribution companies have used in the past years to help them facilitate the solar PV installations they have today. This includes the evolution of PV inverter standards, the use of off-load and on-load tap changers, and the application of export limits. In addition, this talk will present and discuss the advantages and challenges of the most recent strategy that will be used in the coming years by most Australian distribution companies: the use of flexible exports (time-varying export limits at the connection point of customers).

Speaker Bio

Luis(Nando) Ochoa is a Professor of Smart Grids and Power Systems at The University of Melbourne, Australia, and Chief Scientist & Co-Founder at VoltMind. He is an IEEE PES Distinguished Lecturer, an IEEE Senior Member, and a past Editorial Board Member of the IEEE Power and Energy Magazine. His expertise in network integration of distributed energy resources (DER) and smart grids as well as his extensive portfolio of industrial and academic projects have led to 220+ research papers, 90+ technical reports, and two patents. From 2011 to 2021, he was full and part-time with The University of Manchester, UK. From 2007 to 2010 he was a Research Fellow in Energy Systems at the University of Edinburgh, UK. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from UNI (Peru), and a Research MSc and a PhD in Electrical Power Engineering, both from UNESP Ilha Solteira (Brazil).

More info: https://sites.google.com/view/luisfochoa/