Detection and Mitigation of Extreme Losses in Distribution Networks

In Europe, clean distributed generation, DG, is perceived as a crucial instrument to build the path towards carbon emission neutrality. DG already reached a large share in the generation mix of several countries and the reduction of technical losses is one of its most mentioned advantages. In this scope, this paper discusses the weaknesses of this postulation using real networks. The adopted methodology involves the power flow simulation of a collection of real networks, using 15 min real measurements of loads and generations for a whole year. The clustering of similar cases allows identifying the situations that cause higher losses. A complementary objective of this research was to define an approach to mitigate this problem in terms of identifying the branches that, if reinforced, most contribute to losses reduction. The results obtained confirm the rationality of the proposed methodology.