Towards Real-Time Estimation of Solar Generation From Micro-Synchrophasor Measurements

Abstract: This paper presents a set of methods for estimating the renewable energy generation downstream of a measurement device using real-world measurements. First, we present a generation disaggregation scheme where the only information available for estimation is the micro-synchrophasor measurements obtained at the substation or feeder head. We then propose two strategies in which we use measurements from the substation as well as a proxy solar irradiance measurement. Using these two measurement points, we first propose a multiple linear regression strategy, in which we estimate a relationship between the measured reactive power and the load active power consumption, which are then used in disaggregation. Finally, we expand this strategy to strategically manage the reconstruction errors in the estimators. We simultaneously disaggregate the solar generation and load. We show that it is possible to disaggragate the generation of a 7.5 megawatt photovoltaic site with a root-mean-squared error of approximately 450 kilowatts.