Integrated resources planning for a centralized system

EDF Group is implanted in several countries, especially in France, UK, Germany and Italia. Its system is essentially designed from a centralized viewpoint. But from 1990, different factors (such as liberalization of the market, technological progress, economic incentives, environmental constraints...) have led to a strong development of dispersed generation which has to be taken into account in an integrated resources planning approach. Historically, energy is provided by centralized sources from the transmission grid to the distribution one. An important share of dispersed generation would modify the flows and make new constraints on the distribution grid which was not designed to work so. This paper quickly describes the structure and the actors of the French system. Then it presents the consequences of the growth of dispersed generation, regulatory issues, possible scenarios of evolution (percentage of dispersed generation in the whole system capacity), and the ongoing research projects to deal with this new question