Comparing control systems performance in increasing the Hosting Capacity of distribution networks

The increase of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in distribution networks forces the investigation of innovative control solutions. The performance of those solutions can be often evaluated with the use of specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), of which the increase of Hosting Capacity (HC) is one of the most important. The possibility to compare the performance of many control solutions in different scenarios, by the use of these indicators, is important to foster their implementation, since network operators have the necessity to adopt solutions which are replicable and adaptable to continuously-changing and non-predictable scenarios. For these reasons, three Power Flow and Optimal Power Flow engines have been integrated within an algorithm for the HC calculation and applied in a test case. The obtained results are compared with a developed analytical method for the HC calculation, which allows to speed up the calculation and to better identify the correlation between network characteristics and HC values.