Probabilistic load flow procedure for assessing the distributed generation impact on the high voltage network

This paper presents a Probabilistic Load Flow (PLF) procedure that allows the impact of distributed generation (DG) on the transmission system to be assessed. By means of the Monte Carlo technique, several system states are simulated, varying the power injection of DG. The load flow solution is performed by the Newton-Raphson method and a distributed slack bus formulation is adopted, in order to distribute the active power mismatch (created by the random generation) on all the thermal units in the system. Tests are carried out both on a small system and on the Italian network. Results lead to conclude that the probabilistic approach to the power system analysis provides more indications than the traditional deterministic techniques, especially considering a high penetration of DG.