Master's thesis and Internship : Grid Impact of Photovoltaic and Wind Integration in an Energy Community: A Network Model and Hosting Capacity Study of the Liège Science Park

Abstract

Energy communities allow their members to share locally produced electricity through the public distribution network. As their generation portfolio grows, the network that carries the shared energy faces operating conditions it was not designed for, such as reverse power flows, voltage rise and thermal loading. This thesis quantifies these impacts for the energy community of the Liège Science Park, a research and industrial park near Liège (Belgium) that operates as a citizen energy community under the Walloon framework.

Since neither metered data nor official network plans are available, the study is built from public data and documented assumptions. Quarter-hourly synthetic consumption profiles are generated for the 51 occupants from building geometry and energy benchmarks, and PV production profiles are derived from satellite irradiance data for the current installations and for a scenario covering 90\,\% of the eligible roofs. The medium- and low-voltage network is reconstructed from a field survey into a 75-bus model, and each scenario is simulated over a full year at 15-minute resolution by AC power flow.

The network absorbs a five-fold increase of rooftop PV, from 5.2\,\% to 25.6\,\% of the annual demand, without any EN~50160 violation or overload; the community self-sufficiency reaches 23.3\,\% and the network losses decrease by about 12\,\%. Adding a 3~MW wind turbine and a 5~MWp solar farm doubles the self-sufficiency to 46\,\%, provided the units are connected through the existing dedicated feeder; a shorter tie-in into the main feeder causes a few hours of overload per year. The binding constraints are thermal rather than voltage-related, and the 20~MVA primary substation is the structural ceiling of the community, at 13--14.5~MWp of equivalent generation capacity.