Technical Solutions and Standards Upgrade for Photovoltaic Systems Operated over 1500 Vdc

This paper deals with photovoltaic (PV) systems with operating voltage increased over the value 1500 V in DC, which represents the limit of the current solutions and the actual standard for the PV plant at utility-scale level. The increase of the DC voltage is aimed at reducing the cable energy losses, the number of components and to optimise the layout of the plants, increasing the competitiveness of Medium Voltage PV (MVPV) solutions with rated powers of hundreds of megawatt. The analysis carried out has identified the possible solutions to adopt in order to reach this target and has remarked that today the International Standards are not covering all the aspects of the technical solutions to be introduced in a MVPV plant. This paper indicates the key issues to be addressed by new Standards on some components in order to enable the deployment of MVPV solutions. Finally, the characteristics of an installation at 1500 V DC and some results of tests carried out on the isolation system of a 1500 V PV plant are discussed.