Sustaining electrification service from photovoltaic power plants during backflow lightning overvoltages

Abstract Photovoltaic (PV) systems are subjected to lightning strikes that contribute to losing their sustainable electrification service. Furthermore, they are subjected to backflow lightning overvoltages due to the installation in high soil resistivity areas, however, such the study is not aforementioned well in the literature. Therefore, the analyses and reductions of backflow lightning overvoltages are investigated in this paper, considering a PV power plant as an example installed in Taif city, KSA. All PV plant components are modeled using high-frequency models, in which they are such as air-termination, grounding system, surge protective devices, PV string, inverters, underground cables, and power transformers. To decrease the lightning overvoltages in the PV power plant, a modified PV grounding system design is introduced and evaluated. The evaluation is performed considering step voltage profiles using COMSOL Multiphysics and backflow lightning overvoltage magnitudes at different points in PV plant using ATP/EMTP. The results provide the motivation of studying backflow lightning overvoltages in PV plants and evidence of the efficacy of the proposed grounding system design in reducing the overvoltage magnitudes.