Application of emergency and standby generation for distributed generation. I. Concepts and hypotheses

Experience has shown that the demand for electricity imposes excessive peaks for short periods of time. On a yearly basis, these "needle peaks" exist for less than 200 h cumulatively. However, meeting them has produced excessively high costs of electric energy or rolling blackouts when the additional energy was not available. A viable alternative to this excessive cost or blackout is the use of installed emergency and standby capacity for these short intervals of time. To meet the challenges of orchestrating a safe and acceptable interface of the varied power sources, utility companies and state regulators are struggling with the development of suitable interconnect requirements. While there are different strategies for bringing this installed base into service during such periods, this discussion centers on those issues concerned with the parallel operation and interconnection of emergency and standby synchronous generation resources with the electric power system.