Abstract

In the last decade, Conservation Voltage Reduction (CVR) has regained attention as an energy efficiency measure. At the same time, many customers in LV networks have adopted PV systems. Although CVR has been studied for decades, most works were developed when PV were uncommon, leaving the interactions between widespread PV and CVR largely unexplored. This paper examines, from a customer perspective, how higher voltages due to residential PV affect demand, and how CVR can bring benefits in this scenario. A realistic UK MV-LV network with 2,400+ customers is used as a case study, considering two CVR schemes that actively keep customer voltages low: (i) managing primary substation OLTCs and (ii) incorporating OLTCs at secondary substations. Results show that, without CVR, higher voltages due to PV systems increase the energy consumption of appliances. This, in turn, affects mostly customers without PV as they solely rely on grid imports. With CVR, on the other hand, customers that largely rely on the grid (without or with small PV) reduce energy imports the most, making the presence of PV combined with CVR beneficial to everyone.