Writing Application to PGE for Voltage Reduction: 13kW Solar Panels, 260V Network Voltage

Hello colleagues.
I need help writing a letter to PGE to lower the voltage in the network. I have already written one letter and received the answer in the attached photos. I called the case handler.
The answer I got in short is that I should set the inverter to reduce power, or to consume energy on a regular basis. I have 13kW panels and there are problems with the production of more than 7kW. So I explain to him that I do not intend to reduce anything and that I plan to expand the installation by another 4kW because this is what I need to balance myself on a yearly basis. And I am trying to convince you that the prosumer is to consume energy on an ongoing basis and not store it in the network for the winter. Come on shock.
The voltage that prevails in the network during a sunny day is even 260V. Today, even with the fog and the production at the level of 300 W per phase, the voltage was 250V and this one tells me that it is the fault of the photovoltaic. I presented them with the measurements at 9 p.m. with a voltage of 251V and this is also the photovalta's fault.
From 22.00 to 6.00 they lower the voltage on the MV and then I have a voltage of 230-235V.
I tell him how to a normal peasant to lower the taps by 5% and he will be calm. And the fact that they have 40 meters on this line and they will not turn off the electricity twice a year because in winter it will probably have to be raised. I will add that I am the last one on the line and I have never noticed that my voltage was too low.
Summing up, he said that he did not lower because despite 252V by 21h they are normal.
I can set my inverter to 270V but I think this will be the last resort.
PS.
No more than 40kW of installations are installed on this transformer, half of which are oriented to the west.
So please help me write another letter.
image1
Regards, Przemek

Where do you measure voltage? These are the values from the inverter, RG or connectors?

I measure the voltage in the main switchboard. There is 15m of 5x10mm? cable from the switchgear to the meter. Measurements on the PGE meter coincide. One of the measurements is shown at 21:00 from a socket inside the building.
PS The gentlemen from PGE took the measurements in the medium sunlit time and the values given in the letter were measured on my meter while the installation was turned off. When it was on, it was a few more volts. One screen is from today you can see what voltages on the phases with how little production.

Since you closed the duplicate topic, I will repeat it in this, it is very valuable advice.

przemasd wrote:

i can set my inverter to 270v but i think this will be the last resort.

Don't even think about it, it can be a very expensive change when you and your neighbors get burned.

I have a similar problem at home, I have written a letter, and I am waiting for Enea's reaction. I am at the end of the overhead line and the voltage reads from 240 to 250. Theoretically normal, but in production the voltage flies to 255 or 260 for a certain period of time. Internal resistance measurements of the installation were made and are normal. I fight this voltage by changing the QU characteristics, so far the exemplary one gives advice. Which does not change the fact that the reactive power is floating

I wrote to Tauron that it was a bit too high (but within the prescribed limits) and they could lower it so that there would be no problems with the devices.
They wrote back to me that they can measure (the measurement takes a week) but if it is within the limits, I will have to pay for it.
Well, I wrote them that it is within the limits !!!

If you do not fit within the limits, report it and let them correct it. Do not turn off the photovoltaics and aim for sunny days.

It all depends on the attitude of employees - you have a response to my complaint in Energa:

Sir

In response to Mr. e-mai received on April 15, ENERGA-OPERATOR SA Branch in Płock, Płock Distribution Region, informs that, on the basis of the measurements performed, no irregularities were found in the voltage level from the low voltage line side.

According to the analysis of technical parameters, in this case, the phenomenon of increased voltages is generated by improper operation of the inverter in which your photovoltaic installation is equipped. The automation system and control of the photovoltaic installation, with which it is properly equipped and in accordance with the applicable standard, causes its disconnection from the grid in the event of exceeding the preset range of electric energy parameters. It should be emphasized that improper operation of the inverter also affects the voltage levels of other customers supplied from the same transformer station.

Therefore, the only appropriate solution may be the need to expand the installed photovoltaic system with a sequential power switching system, groups of photovoltaic panels depending on the actual voltage level in the LV-0.4kV grid.

Thank you for informing our company of the situation.

Sincerely.

Marta Gankowska
Settlement and Reporting Specialist
Operational Management Department

The hands drop.

Write down what voltage you have in the network with the installation completely switched off when you notice that the inverter increases it to a higher value. You may find that your neighbors and their inverters are similar to yours. The increased voltage on the external network forces your inverter to raise the voltage even more to break through the meter to the "other side". Often people forget that others also have photovoltaic installations. Then they are deeply disappointed.
Enter the voltage now (today) as it is at off. installation and provide it when the inverter strongly raises them. I'm very curious.
Regards.

Now half the power from the panels and after turning it off for a while before the inverters synchronized but around noon it will be 253V per phase as the sun will be

I have a similar problem, but in my case the voltage is too low (temporarily even 185v) and there are often jumps up and down. I am at the end of the line, so they obviously have a problem with it, which they also admitted in the official letter ... They say that the modernization of the line will be in 2022
I wrote a complaint to the supplier, they took measurements but according to them it is ok. So I wrote a complaint to the Energy Regulatory Office and instead of taking their measurements they ordered my supplier to take another measurement and again nothing ...
It is strange that during these measurements, and they last about two weeks, suddenly the voltage is miraculously correct ... So I suspect that the supplier regulates the voltage for his own needs and then returns to the previous settings.
You will have a hard time winning with them because it is one gang and the URE is supposed to be the highest, but it still has the proverbial "Kowalski" somewhere

As I wrote above. I am interested in the voltage in the external network when it is sunny and your photovoltaic installation is turned off. Completely disconnected from the network. The point is to know the voltage value in the "public" grid when the sun is operating strongly and the neighbors' inverters increase the voltage.

przemasd wrote:

The voltage that prevails in the network during a sunny day is even 260V.

przemasd wrote:

I can set my inverter to 270V but I think this will be the last resort.

przemasd wrote:

I will add that I am the last one on the line and I have never noticed that my voltage was too low.

Take an IPZ measurement. Probably your LV grid is old, "soft", not suitable for PV. In addition, there are no surplus loads pushed to the grid, because "everyone" assumed PV for themselves. The tension in the network is growing.

MarcinM2020 wrote:

I suspect that the supplier regulates the voltage himself for his own needs and then returns to the previous settings.

For what? Do you think the operator has these previous settings done in order to have to modernize the line? Nonsense.

No, you misunderstood me, it's not like he lowers the voltage on purpose, I think this state is due to the fact that the installation is old and overloaded.
For me the voltage is sometimes very low, often below 205V, and sometimes it drops temporarily even to 185V! (and I can see it because, among other things, I have a meter in the fuse box) ...
I think (not only me, because other neighbors as well) that while my electricity supplier was taking the measurements mentioned above, the parameters suddenly improved in a miraculous way ... The bulbs stopped blinking ..., the indications in my box did not fall lower than ok 210v ..., my hi-fi set did not defend itself as always with voltage drops ...
You can easily refute my observations because I have no evidence, but it is strange that not only I noticed this interesting relationship.
I will add that the installation is new for me, in a recently built house, so there should be no doubts here, some time ago I advertised an induction hob because somehow an error appeared ... According to the website, it is operational, but after time I see that the occurrence of this error coincides with voltage drops.
In general, the topic is not very important, because how? I did what I could ..., I'm waiting for the promised modernization of the network in 2022. We'll see

There is no problem of too high voltage in the grid, because the photovoltaic inverters turn off and everything is in accordance with the regulations. At least that is what the letters that prosumers receive from them show.
The problem is obviously different, prosumers have invested in installations that do not produce as much energy as possible. The payback period extends beyond the lifetime of the device.
The prosumer has several options to ensure the continuous operation of the micro-installation:
1. Investing in a not too complicated automatics that switches the load on during high insolation. Usually, however, there are no devices with adequate power, because heating in summer is pointless.
2. Installing a voltage regulator based on single-phase autotransformers with motors changing the sliders. If they are used to increase the voltage when it is too low, they are perfectly legal. Regulation of too high voltage is also legal, but unethical, because the neighbors' inverters will turn off. The operator has no legal ability to check what the prosumer has installed on his side of the meter.
3. Investments in energy storage, ie in batteries, which have been promoted recently, do not make economic sense for individual prosumers. Most batteries, no matter what type, will fail at current prices before the investment is paid back. They will withstand LTO batteries, they can work for 20 years. It pays only to prosumer companies that pay for energy according to standard price lists.
Contrary to popular belief, the LV lines are not overloaded. The life of the line is not important, but the cross-sections of the conductors through which currents may flow several times greater than those occurring during normal operation. LV lines are designed for the energy flow from the transformer to the consumer, taking into account the permissible voltage drops. Changing the direction of energy flow requires network modernization. Operators propose and test modernization solutions based on the achievements of electrical engineering from several dozen years ago. No comment.
The current state of theory and technology allows for the adoption of assumptions specifying how an LV grid with a bidirectional energy flow should operate. You can start with a transformer station, which should be equipped with a smooth, continuous voltage regulation on LV lines depending on the direction of energy flow. It will provide the appropriate voltage on a several-hundred-meter section, at the end of which another device to smoothly regulate the voltage should be installed on the next section of the line.

zkrzem76 wrote:

The current state of theory and technology allows for the adoption of assumptions specifying how an LV grid with a bidirectional energy flow should operate. You can start with a transformer station, which should be equipped with a smooth, continuous voltage regulation on LV lines depending on the direction of energy flow. It will provide the appropriate voltage on a several-hundred-meter section, at the end of which another device to smoothly regulate the voltage should be installed on the next section of the line.

Unfortunately, the current state of financing and budgets of energy companies as well as the legal environment do not allow for such solutions. As with road solutions, healthcare solutions, railroads and many other areas. What a misfortune!

Such a device was tested by Energa in a pilot project. Works great.
It is an Automatic Voltage Regulator. Problems reported from prosumers are needed.

This topic was already discussed in one of the threads, but unfortunately the author did not provide the price of such a transformer, maybe you know it?

Even the modernization of the LV grid within the entire village will not do much. So what if a mega-stiff network will be created on colossal cable cross-sections, since there are tens and hundreds of kilometers of SN network further on. Me also upgrade? It won't do anything anyway, because the mains is not a battery. The electricity that is produced has to be consumed on an ongoing basis. The question is where and how? Let only every tenth farm has 5 kW on the roof. Little or no self-consumption. And the network is still powered by a power plant, and that will not change. It's just that people rushed to this supposed prosumer warehouse like a cat for lard, oversizing their installations in order to have prund for free all year or even earn money. And here's a lame ... The alleged warehouse did not exist, does not exist and will not exist for a long time. There is nowhere to punch this current, the inverters turn off.

Modernization of the LV network with voltage regulators does not require replacement of wires with larger cross-sections. This is not what this is about. Some information can be found by entering "Active Voltage Regulator" in Google. The regulator sets the voltage in each phase separately, but its second function is the symmetrization of the currents. This concept means the conversion of energy in the converter in such a way that it is taken from the phase through which a large amount of energy fed into the grid flows, and it is transferred to another phase from which the consumers take energy or introduce it to the grid. For 10 ms, the energy is stored in the inverter capacitor and then returned. The goal is to minimize the current flowing through the neutral conductor. Since Tesla invented three-phase current, three wires are enough to transfer energy. The fourth, neutral, is unnecessary and even harmful. The current flowing through the neutral causes a voltage drop across it that adds geometrically to the voltage drops in each of the phases. In one or two phases, the voltage can increase significantly. Symmetrization causes that there is no voltage drop on the neutral conductor, and voltage drops on the phases. When feeding energy into the grid, the voltage upstream of the regulator located deep in the grid increases, but within acceptable limits.
The situation is different in MV networks. There is no neutral conductor, voltage unbalance is caused by positive and negative sequence components (Basic Electrical Engineering course). The MV network can transmit energy for several kilometers with a power exceeding that of the transformer.
The number of micro-installations connected to the LV network is limited by the power of the transformers, not the cross-sections of the wires. It is only necessary to equip the line with the intelligence provided by active regulators.

How to fight to reduce the voltage in the network? In my place, in the middle of winter, in the middle of the night, the "rest" voltage is 250V. How am I supposed to sell anything online under these conditions? In the summer, my installation does not work as it works, as a result, I pay the installment for the PV installation and bills for the energy used, you say "turn on the load", I can't turn on, but what if the neighbors have higher voltages on their inverters that it can jump over 260V? As I reported to PGE, the ambulance was coming after sunset, with information that they had such an order from above ... I have monitoring, data is collected from the Orno OR-WE-517 meter compliant with EN50470-1:2006, EN50470-3:2006 MID Directive 2014/32/EU

Would it not be possible to make some kind of general motion or petition of all users affected in Poland. Because one pronsumet they have with apologies in d....

I have the same problem. Highest sunshine and the panels produce nothing. I wrote in a simple way to ask them to do something about it. The answer like that of a colleague on the forum, that they are monitoring and I am not consuming enough. Failure. I'm going to write again, but so more seriously. Or maybe someone already got a positive answer. I will mention that they want cash for the measurements.


Added after 2 [minutes]:


>>19375761 hey, also got such a letter. I have the same problem

roza46 wrote:

. Highest insolation, and the panels produce nothing.

They do produce. Only you don't consume it.

roza46 wrote:

That they monitor and I don't consume enough.

And this is true.
Because supposedly what would you want to do with that energy? Resell it to a closer or distant neighbour? And why would you want to do that to him if he doesn't need electricity in the middle of the day or if he has his own PV?
Alas the truth is brutal, like thousands of others you have been duped by the PV salesman. A subsidy from the state, a comfortable loan and on top of that electricity for free or more. A salesman is a salesman. Anything to sell a product. And in the meantime it turns out that nobody wants your electricity. Yes, maybe a factory at the other end of town would use the electricity, but it has to be transmitted there somehow and the power grid is completely unsuitable for this. And it won't be for a long time. The solution is simple: produce during the day and distribute in the evening and at night when there is demand. The only thing is that you need local electricity storage for this. And these are considerable costs that will never be recouped.

Let's take a different approach. I will sell you a pair of mice. For only 1000zl. Expensive? Not at all, because mice multiply easily. After a year you will have 2000 mice. Each one is worth 2zl because that's what people in shops pay for a mouse, for example, for a snake to feed. So after one year you have 4,000 in mice minus 1,000 in investment or 3,000 in profit. And after 10 years? Hoho. Of course, after a year you will come to me and ask what you should do with so many mice since nobody wants to buy them. Hola, that's not my problem. I bought two mice for £2. I sold them for 1,000. A couple of thousand people went to see my tale of a mouse farm. I earned my fair share of money and the mice? Roll with them yourselves. Do you understand the analogy?

kortyleski wrote:

This electricity that is produced has to be consumed on an ongoing basis.The question is where and how?

You need to take credit for powerful computers and put up bitcoin mines.

misiek1111 wrote:

take credit for powerful computers and put up bitcoin mines

Weak and uncertain. Better to take out a loan and put up a small warehouse, just the same it won't pay back. But at least you will get something back there. Small means something like 30kWh. For electronics, no problem and no cost. Batteries about 3 000, some inverters.for a classic prosumer to whom a company will come and make him the cost is sky high.

misiek1111 wrote:

kortyleski wrote:

This electricity that is produced has to be consumed on an ongoing basis.The question is where and how?

You need to take credit for powerful computers and build bitcoin mines.

Or build a pumped storage power plant.... .

Underground greenhouse for marijuana cultivation.