Power Quality Challenges Associated with Distributed Generation Planning: A Simulation-based Demonstration

Increased energy crisis caused by rapid industrial growth, awareness towards environmental issues and technical constraints of distribution networks, have given significant boost to the application of distributed generation (DG) in the last decades and motivation behind that being the associated opportunities such as power loss minimization, voltage quality improvement, enhanced reliability, enhanced power transfer capacity, potential environmental impacts and many more. Nevertheless, availing these opportunities up to maximum extent is a stimulating task for the Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) due to very less control over DG owners who independently plan the placement of DGs according to fuel type, capacity and location etc. as per the availability and erroneous allocation may also negatively affect economic operation and technical performance of the system. Appropriate planning of DGs only can assist DNOs in achieving the aforementioned advantages to their level best. The objective of this paper is to throw light on power quality (PQ) challenges associated with the planning of distributed generation systems based on renewable as well as non-renewable sources. For demonstration purposes, planning of DG supported by conventional fuel as well as renewable energy has been attempted on a modified IEEE 5 bus test system in Matlab/Simulink. This article is of great importance for researchers as well as power industry professionals for getting an insight into challenges associated with distributed generation planning in modern power distribution networks.