Investigating the Impacts of Distributed Generation on an Electrical Distribution System Already Stressed by Non-Linear Domestic Loads (original) (raw)

2012, 2012 Asia-Pacific Power and Energy Engineering Conference

The restructuring of global power industries has introduced a number of challenges, such as conflicting planning objectives and increasing uncertainties, to transmission network planners. During the recent past, a number of distributed generation technologies also reached a stage allowing large-scale implementation, which will profoundly influence the power industry, as well as the practice of transmission network expansion. In the new market environment, new approaches are needed to meet the above challenges. In this paper, a market simulation-based method is employed to assess the economical attractiveness of different generation technologies, based on which future scenarios of generation expansion can be formed. A multi-objective optimization model for transmission expansion planning is then presented. A novel approach is proposed to select transmission expansion plans that are flexible given the uncertainties of generation expansion, system load, and other market variables. Comprehensive case studies will be conducted to investigate the performance of our approach. In addition, the proposed method will be employed to study the impacts of distributed generation on transmission expansion planning. Index Terms-Distributed generation, transmission planning. I. INTRODUCTION T HE restructure and deregulation of the global power industry have introduced fundamental changes to the practices of power system planning. Traditionally, generation expansion and transmission expansion are sub-tasks of a power system planning process performed by a regulated power utility. In the new market environment, however, transmission expansion planning is usually performed separately by transmission network service providers (TNSPs), while generation expansion becomes the task of generation companies or investors. These changes have imposed new objectives and uncertainties on transmission planners, making the transmission planning problem much more difficult. Generally speaking, transmission expansion planning (TEP) aims at addressing the problem of expanding the power trans-Manuscript