Opportunities for active DER management in deferral of distribution system reinforcements

Power systems worldwide have gone through a transition from vertically integrated into liberalized energy markets. At the same time, increased environmental concerns are promoting the use of renewable and efficient generation technologies. Consequently, a growing number of small-scale distributed energy resources (DER) are being installed in distribution systems. Passive operation of DER can result in severe grid operation problems. In contrast, active DER management can bring mutual benefits for the DER owner as well as distribution system operators (DSO). In this article a flexible multi-objective optimization scheme is presented in which DER placement and optimal ancillary services are evaluated and compared with conventional grid reinforcements. This allows assessing the potential of optimal active DER management and evaluating different tariff schemes for DER connection at different levels of DER in the grid. The proposed method uses a hybrid strength Pareto evolutionary algorithm (SPEA2) with a distribution optimal power flow (OPF). Results are analyzed using the UKGDS 355-bus system.