The increasing amount of photovoltaic plants leads to voltage rise in the distribution grid. By providing reactive power, photovoltaic and battery inverter can reduce the voltage. For this purpose, most inverters have implemented a voltage dependent reactive power curve, which is often parameterized once during the installation of the system. In most cases, the parameterization doesn’t take into account the position of the system in the grid. As a result, inverters closer to the distribution transformer provide less or no reactive power as the voltage at the beginning of a feeder is much smaller. Within the SNOOPI project Energynautics develops a regulation tool, which parameterizes the reactive power curve in dependence of the position in the grid. This leads to a coordinated behaviour of all inverters in a distribution grid and ensures that all inverters provide a similar amount of reactive power. Moreover, the regulation tool notices if the grid topology has changed and adapts the reactive power control to this change.

As a last step of the project, field tests with seven battery systems are carried out. The battery systems are installed in the distribution network of the field test area. Each one is equipped with a prototype of the SNOOPI box controlling the inverter. The tests started in the summer of 2017 and are expected to last until mid-2018.

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