Sizing of distributed generation plant through techno-economic feasibility assessment

A methodology is proposed for the techno-economic assessment of a biomass power plant. The economic aspects of the assessment involve determining the economically optimal size of a given biomass power plant depending on resource related costs and, in turn, the economic viability of the project. The technical aspects of the assessment check for the possibility that, in the given distribution network, the economically optimal plant might cause breaches of limits on line flow, voltage, fault current or power loss. A breach would lead to a curtailment of plant capacity in steps so as to avoid that breach. The curtailed plant sizes are reassessed for economic viability. In the case of line active power loss, the sensitivity of loss to each distributed generation (DG) plant location and size can be used to select candidate DG sites for curtailment. Cost-based and sensitivity-based plant capacity curtailments have been tested on the same UK distribution network models and the resulting DG placement solutions compared