Study in the impact of Distributed Generator (DG) placement and sizing on a ring distribution network

The increasing demand of electrical energy in our country requires an increase in the generation part of the power system and this leads to an increase in the amount of distributed generation on the power system. Distributed generator (DG) provides electric power to a specific location near to the customers and it eliminates the unnecessary transmission and distribution costs. Due to the penetration of distributed generators to the power system, the power system will experience a drastic change on its performance and stability. A thorough investigation is needed so that the researcher can analyze the effect of distributed generators in a meshed distribution network particularly to determine the best distributed generators' placement and rating. System performance during normal and abnormal conditions can be further analyzed using computer software. Simulating a 46-Bus meshed network using ETAP 6.0, the load flow analysis is done to check the voltage limit values. Different cases were considered, having no distribution generators in the power system as the reference case. To further investigate the effect of distributed generators' penetration on the system performance of a 46-Bus meshed network, the researchers looked into the fault current contribution of distributed generators at different fault points in the system using short circuit analysis and transient stability analysis. Also, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test is used as a statistical treatment to examine if the effect of distributed generators' penetration of the system is large enough compared to the base case.