Technical and economical assessment of reactive power provision from distributed generators: Case study area of East Denmark

The transformation of the electrical energy system with traditional central power generation into a system of high penetration of distributed generation, requires a change in the current system operation practices. It is expected that a significant number of central power plants, which traditionally provided most ancillary services, will be taken out of operation during the next decades. From a technical and economic perspective, this paper evaluates the potential of reactive power provision from the distribution grid to the transmission grid. This approach is compared to reactive power provision from conventional dynamic reactive power compensators regarding technical and economic aspects. It will be shown that distributed generators can provide reactive power while being cost-competitive to conventional techniques.