Control and monitoring requirements for distribution systems with high penetration of renewable energy sources

Proliferation of renewable and alternative energy resources as part of distribution systems is changing the paradigm of design and operation. This paper describes some of the expected issues due to integrating renewable energy resources at distribution levels and investigates the needs for deployment and/or enhancement of additional/existing measurement devices and controls on distribution grids. The aim is to determine the requirement for installation of accurate meters, how the data will be used, and what analytical applications are needed to detect and mitigate a power quality issues before it becomes widespread and causes cascading failure.