Abstract :
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 work 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.
Keywords :
distributed power generation; environmental factors; power distribution planning; power generation economics; power markets; wind power plants; EDF Group; France; Germany; Italia; UK; centralized source; dispersed generation; distribution grid; economic incentives; environmental constraint; integrated resources planning; market liberalization; ongoing research project; technological progress; transmission grid; Distributed power generation; Environmental economics; Government; Mesh generation; Power generation economics; Power markets; Power system management; Power system security; Wind energy; Wind farms;
