Probabilistic Impact Assessment of Low Carbon Technologies in LV Distribution Systems

Residential-scale low carbon technologies (LCTs) can help decarbonizing our economies but can also lead to technical issues, particularly in low voltage (LV) distribution systems. To quantify these problems this work proposes a probabilistic impact assessment methodology. First, realistic 5-min time-series daily profiles are produced for photovoltaic panels, electric heat pumps, electric vehicles, and micro combined heat and power units. Then, to cater for the uncertainties of LCTs (e.g., size, location, and behavior), a Monte Carlo analysis is carried out considering 100 simulations for different penetration levels (percentage of houses with a LCT). This methodology is applied to 128 real U.K. LV feeders showing that about half of them can have voltage and/or congestion issues at some penetration of LCTs. Furthermore, to identify the relationships between the first occurrence of problems and key feeder parameters (e.g., length, number of customers), a correlation analysis is developed per LCT. Crucially, these results can be translated into lookup tables to help distribution network operators in producing preliminary estimates of the LCT hosting capacity of a given feeder.