The real-world challenges and opportunities of distributed generation

Whilst distributed generation, particularly in the form of solar photovoltaics, is appearing as one of the key components of future power systems, it brings many challenges. Challenges such as intermittent generation supply, fault detection, anti-islanding operation and voltage control have received a great deal of research and practical attention. One practical challenge that hasn't been examined in detail is the ability of power system operating with a significant amount of distributed generation (and thus relatively less rotating inertia) to cope with sudden shifts in load. This paper presents the results of a practical investigation in to such an issue. One way of managing intermittent generation supply is to use output forecasting techniques, that give a forecast of generation availability at some future time, to ensure supply will be matched with likely future demand. We also present the results of an investigation in to the performance of one such solar output forecasting technique, based around the use of support vector machine approaches that take weather forecasts to provide detailed future generation forecasting.