Effects of solar PV installations and solar inverter reactive power control on distribution network losses on Finnish rural areas

Energy transition is reshaping energy systems and affecting loading of electricity distribution networks significantly. Household customers are investing in solar PV systems to locally produce electricity for their own demand and to sell energy to the distribution grid. Solar PV systems can cause voltage rise problems or overloading of secondary transformers. Voltage rise challenges can be moderated with reactive power control of solar PV inverters. On the other hand, reactive power consumption on solar PV inverters affects the distribution network losses. This paper focuses on studying how the increasing amount of distributed solar PV capacity will affect the distribution network losses in Finnish conditions. Secondly, it is studied what kind of impact the solar inverter reactive power control will have on the losses.