Abstract
High penetration of photovoltaic generation might lead to problems in the distribution grid such as instability, frequency deviations and reverse power flow. Parts of these problems can be mitigated by minimizing the exchange from and to the grid. A possible strategy to minimize the power injected into the grid and to maximize the power used to supply the load is to design a PV system in order to optimize the matching with the load. The classical strategy used in PV installation is to maximize the production. However, to address load matching, power maximization is not anymore the suitable approach. For this purpose, the aim of this work is to present two different strategies to optimize the orientation of photovoltaic modules. The first considers every possible orientations and no restriction on the surface area as possible in a free field installation. The second considers the surface of a building and tries to optimize the module orientations taking into account typical constraints from the built environment (e.g. limited area, shading from nearby building, etc).