A growth pattern of DG penetrations within LDC planning model in competitive energy environment

This paper presents a planning model for a local distribution company (LDC) providing electricity to meet its load growth in a competitive operational manner. Clean and renewable energy resources have been broadly deployed within LDC service territory and its asset and business managements are the main concern of current research efforts. A pattern function of distributed generation (DG) penetration within LDC is introduced. A market trend is investigated and defined in this paper where it can be involved in a planning problem. Based on a planner experience, annual budget thresholds are also discussed in order to measure gross costs of planning and their variations with new DG resources as an attractive planning option. The DG deployment index (D_dgI-index) related to DGs growth function is introduced where it could be adjusted, particularly, from the budget limits and gross costs of investments taking into consideration the energy market trend. The mathematical model uses the full ac power flow formulations, and the planning problem is a dynamic one, designed to tackle all these issues simultaneously.