Study of Scope and Effects of Isolated Small

Distributed Generation Sources and their

Integration With Existing System
Muhammad Rizwan Javed1, Mohsan Islam2, Zaheer Babar3
1
University of Engineering and Technology, Taxila, Pakistan
2
UCET,Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan
3
National University of Science and Technology, Pakistan

Abstract— Electrical energy is a major necessity of every
organization of world and the electrical energy demand is
increasing day by day. From past few decades, electricity is
generated centrally and then distributed over the whole
areas of the country. But many problems occur in centrally
generated system like huge power loss in transmission line,
intermittent switching of load etc and another major issue
arising from last few years is severe load shedding in our
country. Load shedding, a last stage solution of balancing
power generation and consumption, greatly affects the
economy of any country because economy is based upon
industrial and commercial sector of any country and an
electrical power is backbone of any industry. Now a days,
industries and other organizations place their own local
generation due to severe loadsheding. These organizations
and industries have some standby power to meet their
future needs and these local generations are in the form of
renewable as well as nonrenewable sources, also termed as
distributed generation sources.
In this paper, we made an analysis for integration of
different distributed generation sources with existing
distribution system feeder. For this we made a survey of
some selected organizations and collected data of their own
total power production and standby power. After this
Electrical Transient Analysis Program (ETAP) software is
selected for analysis. Whole model of the distribution
feeder and standby power is designed in the software.
These distributed generation sources (DGS) are then
integrated and fed into the power system. After successful
completion of this whole modeling, analysis process has
done. Analysis of voltage profile, losses in the power
systems, reliability and at the end economic analysis and
feasibility study is made. The results of these analyses are
discussed in detail in this paper.
Index Terms— ETAP, DGS, Integration, voltage profile,
Simulation.
I. INTRODUCTION
The consumption of energy across the world has
risen dramatically since the start of the industrial
revolution. Due to this, the world’s fossil fuel resources
began to be used at large scale [1]. Since then
worldwide energy consumption has continued to grow
rapidly. We now find ourselves at a turning point in our
history. We are fastly approaching the peak of our
consumption of fossil fuel and faced reduction fossil
fuel resources, particularly oil and gas .Much of the
technological and social development of our world has
been based on cheap, readily available energy [2]. It has
to some extent been taken for granted. This is now
changing as we are facing increase in prices of oil and
gas and increasing concerns about security of
supply. This has forced a re-examination of how we
both consume and harvest energy.
Increasing demand for an increasingly scarce resource
certainly results in a rise in price [3].The future fossil
fuel price characteristics will have a significant impact
on electricity industries and the societies that rely on
them. In addition to looking at energy resources such as
nuclear or coal, the research is now on to couple new
forms of energy, which have not previously been
utilized. Concerns about global warming are a
significant driver for renewable energy sources [4].
Photovoltaic and wind energy systems are technologies
which are widely used and they are also in the
developmental stage, although there are some
installations in our country and foreign countries. All of
these alternative energy resources are likely to increase
in utilization and contribute to the world’s energy
requirements in the coming years [5].
Distributed generation plants are considered as the
power plants with small power generation capacity
(typically 50MW or less). The distributed generation
mainly comprises of renewable energy such as solar
power, wind energy, biomass energy power generation,
small scale gas turbine generation, micro hydro power
generation and energy storage devices [6]. These
generating plants are located near to user site or load,
which can be operated in grid or isolated plant.
The aim of this research paper is to find the effect and
scope of integration of distributed generation sources
with the existing power system. As distributed
generation includes different small energy sources
present in our areas. For this purpose firstly we selected

978-1-4673-6813-1/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE

a typical feeder from distribution substation which have
maximum load capacity and then calculated the total
distributed generation available in the premises of this
distribution feeder. These small generation sources are
then integrated and connected to electrical power system
at specified point on a feeder and then checked the
results. The complete data of the feeder and distributed
generation is collected and then fed into the ETAP
software and obtained the results. The result shows the
improvement in voltage profile, reliability and reduction
in power losses.
II. INTEGRATION OF DISTRIBUTED
GENERATION SYSTEM (DGS) WITH EXISTING
POWER SYSTEM
Distributed generation (DG) is small scale generation
located at various places near to consumers [7]. A future
power system will based on high penetration of
renewable and low carbon distributed generation (DG)
and likely to be quite different from this existing system.
Our work demonstrates that renewable and non-
renewable energy systems tend to drive less investment
in transmission capacity and that diversity in output
between conventional and distributed generation (DG)
technologies open opportunities for sharing of network
capacity. The increased demand of this distributed
generation has lead to change in the characteristics of
the network, with more variable and bidirectional active
and reactive power flows. These distributed generation
(DG) sources are altering the technical characteristics of
the networks, and pushing them to operate closer to their
safe limit and reliable operation. As a result, the need
for distribution networks to operate at their maximum
capacity is being felt particularly with DG.
In many countries the generator must pay for any
distribution network reinforcements required for
connection. This can present a considerable cost to the
generator and may be a barrier to further DG
penetration. As a result, the available capacity of the
existing network should be utilized fully.
Fig.1. Vertically integrated Power System with DG
Often the small scale distributed generation is not
directly connected to the grid. This generation
technology or operation characteristics require the use of
some interface between the generator and the utility
grid. For example Solar photovoltaic generates dc power
and therefore dc-ac base converter is required to
interface it with grid [10]. The induction generator based
wind turbine generation can be connected directly to the
ac grid [11]. However, concerns such as starting
transients, energy conversion efficiency and power
quality issues enforces one to the use of electronics (PE)
interface as a better choice [12]. In this research work
two renewable resources (Photovoltaic generation and
Wind turbine generation) and one non-renewable diesel
generator are taken into account. The interface required
for them is given below in table I.
TABLE I
Type Interface
Solar
Power Electronic converter
Photovoltaic
Induction generator/Power
Wind
electronic converter
Can be Directly connected with
Diesel generator
grid
The grid includes the distributed generation (DG)
sources, energy storage facilities and loads. The
associated DG sources are designed to transform the
unstable wind power and solar power to stable energy.
The loads include the ac consumption RL Load. DG
could be connected in the grid via PE converters and the
ac loads directly with the grid. The isolated distributed
generation (DG) sources used in this paper comprises of
wind power system, photovoltaic system, and diesel
generator unit.
A. Integration of solar PV generation unit
The building block of the PV array is the solar cell,
which is basically a P-N semiconductor junction that
directly converts solar radiation into dc current using the
photovoltaic effect.The ideal photovoltaic solar cell can
be electrically modeled with a network containing a
light generated current source, an anti-parallel diode
representing the nonlinear impedance of the P-N
junction, and series and parallel intrinsic resistances
[13].
Fig.2.The equivalent model of Distribution system with DG
Since a PV panel is composed primarily of series
connected cells, and a PV array is composed of series
and parallel connected modules, the single cell circuit
can theoretically be scaled up to represent any Ns-series
and Np-parallel combination.
Fig.3 Block diagram of Solar PV panels integration with local Grid
III. IMPLEMENTATION AND SIMULATION IN
ETAP
Software for analysis was selected and we found that
ETAP (Electrical Transient Analysis Program) is very
much suitable for analysis. Whole model of the feeder is
designed in this software and the distributed generation
(DG) sources are also designed in this software. These
distributed generations (DG) are then integrated and fed
into the power system. After successful completion of
this whole modeling we started analysis process. We
made analysis of voltage profile, losses in the power
system, reliability and at the end economic analysis and
feasibility study is made.
Solar PV arrays model is integrated through DC-DC and
then DC-AC converter with the system as shown in
Fig.5

B. Integration of wind energy conversion system

Wind energy is the energy of air around the earth

surface and it is considered as a mechanical energy
source. The power of wind energy nowadays is used to
move power turbines and generates electricity. The level
of generated electricity strongly depends on the level of
wind speed and design of the wind turbines. The wind
output power depends on speed of wind. Wind power is
Fig.5.Part of ETAP model integrated with Solar PV unit
one of the renewable energy sources which has been
Wind energy conversion system comprised of storage
widely developed in recent years. Wind energy has
battery, DC-AC converter and a transformer. This
many advantages such as no pollution, relatively low
system is integrated with the system in ETAP as shown
capital cost involved and the short gestation period.
in Fig.6
C. Integration of diesel generators with the system

An Electrical generator is a device that moves electrical

energy from a mechanical energy source using
electromagnetic induction [14]. The process known as
electricity generation and is analogous to a water pump.
The source of mechanical energy for diesel generator is
reciprocating engine.
Two diesel generators of 425 KW and 327KW are
integrated at two buses, bus no.86 and bus no. 74 in
ETAP model respectively.

Fig.6 Part of ETAP designed model with Integrated Wind Energy

Conversion system

Diesel generators as a large DG source integrated at two

different buses of feeder in ETAP as shown in Fig.7

Fig.4 Block Diagram of Wind Turbine system integrated with

Grid/Transmission network
 IV. RESULTS

After designing specified feeder in ETAP, first

simulation was done without integration of DGS at peak
load and collected data of Voltage profile at all buses.
The buses located at far end have lower voltage profile
than the buses present near to grid. The voltage profile
of some buses is written in given table II when DGS are
not integrated. The table III represents the voltage
profile of same buses when DGS are integrated.

Fig.7. Integration of Diesel Generator as Distributed

Generation at bus no. 86

V. POWER LOSSES CALCULATION IN ETAP

TABLE II

VOLTAGE PROFILE WITHOUT DGS AT PEAK ETAP use Newton Raphson method to calculate the
LOAD power system losses because it requires less number of
Node no. Voltage profile (%) iterations. The power system losses are shown in Pi
Node 1 100 graphs. The power losses without DG and with
Node 7 80.38 integrating DG in power system are calculated. For this
Node 14 76.94 purpose we have selected three points. First is node 1,
Node 21 74.34 node 2 and node 3.Calculate the results through power
Node 28 68.15 flow analysis and open the losses tab and check the
losses. Firstly take the results without DGS. Connecting
TABLE III DGS and then take the results with connecting DGS.
The graph obtained after the comparison is given in
VOLTAGE PROFILE WITH DGS AT PEAK LOAD
Fig.9.
Node no. Voltage profile (%)
Node 1 100 1 Loss without DGS Loss withDGS
0.812
Node 7 95.66
Node 14 95.38 0.547
MW

0.5
Node 21 94.89 0.324
Node 28 87.5 0.073 0.08 0.032
0
The graphical comparison of voltage profile of buses Line 1-2 Line 2-3 Line 3-4
with and without DGS is represented in fig.8. This distribution lines
figure helps us to understand the clear difference of Fig.9. Losses Reduction after integrating DG
voltage profile improvement when DGS are integrated
in the system. DGS has very deep effect on the power system. As with
120 the improvement in the voltage profile DGS also
Voltage profile without DGS
reduces the losses in the transmission lines with very
Voltage Profile with DGS
100 high percentage which is clear from the above graph.
These results are taken from report of project model on
80 ETAP after performing no of experiments (by changing
the load on the buses attached with lines).
60
VI. CONCLUSION
40
Our research work proves the effective and economical
20
integration of DGS with existing power system with the
0 following advantages,
Node 1 Node 14 Node 28  Provide uninterrupted power supply
 Improves the voltage profile of all the buses
Fig.8. Bar Graphical Comparison of Voltage profiles  Reduce the power losses
  Improves the reliability
 More Economical and feasible

Authors & Affiliations:
1. Mohsan Islam
Student: M.Sc. Electrical Power Engineering
Email: mohsanislam82@gmail.com
Department of Electrical Engineering,
UCET-IUB, Pakistan
2. M. Rizwan Javed
M.Sc. Electrical Power Engineering
Email: rizwan.javedsgd@gmail.com
Department of Electrical Engineering,
UET Taxila, Pakistan
3. Mudasaar Asghar
B.Sc. Electrical Power Engineering
Email: mudasir.asghar@gmail.com
Department of Electrical Engineering,
UCET-IUB, Pakistan
4. M. Zaheer Babar
M.Sc. Electrical Power Engineering
Email: zaheerbabar08el70@gmail.com
NUST (CEME), Pakistan
Acknowledgment
We are very thankful to Prof. A.Q Chang, professor
at University College of engineering and technology,
The Islamia University of Bahawalpur who encouraged
and helped us in the completion of our research work.
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