How much rooftop PV can the IEEE 13-node feeder take before voltage binds, and which cheap measure adds the most?

What it found

OpenDSS on the IEEE 13-node test feeder (3,466 kW peak): total PV is ramped from zero over 300 random placements (1–8 customer nodes, seed 1) until the first service voltage above 1.05 pu, line above its ampacity or transformer above its kVA rating, with every measure scored on the same placements. At 30 % of peak load the median placement takes 1,015 kW (10th–90th percentile 510–1,893) and voltage binds first in 224 of 300. Lowering the regulator set-point by 2 V adds the most (+310 kW median, better on 74 % of placements, worse on 10 %, at 0.007 pu less margin at peak). A fixed power factor of 0.95 changes the median by −60 kW and the IEEE 1547-2018 Category B volt-var curve by 0, because the regulators’ line-drop compensation holds the voltage up; with taps frozen they add +110 and +60 kW, and with line-drop compensation off +50 and +10. Midday EV charging adds +10 kW because the load lands on the same 500 kVA transformer. The unmodified feeder reproduces the published IEEE voltages to 0.003 pu. Limits: one small feeder, snapshots not a day, conductor ampacities and the 1547 curve points recalled and not verified, EV load a rounded estimate, utility regulator settings not known.

A figure from its own output

Paper, code and results

• README and method
• Experiments and results
• Code
• Tests

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Produced with AI assistance (Claude). Results are from the code in this repository and are simulated or stylised unless the abstract says otherwise; nothing here implies affiliation with or endorsement by any lab, researcher or company cited. MIT licensed.