Optimal capacity and location assessment of natural gas fired distributed generation in residential areas

With the increasing use of natural gas to generate electricity, installed natural gas fired microturbines are found in residential areas to generate electricity locally. This paper discusses the methodology of assessing optimal capacity and locations for installing natural gas fired microturbines in distribution residential network. The IEEE 123 Node Test Feeder was selected as the test bed. Three phase unbalanced electric power flow was run in OpenDSS through COM server, and the gas distribution network was analyzed using GASWorkS. The continual sensitivity analysis methodology was proposed to select multiple DG locations and annual simulation was run to minimize annual average losses. Nodal pressures of the gas system were checked for various cases to investigate if existing gas distribution network can accommodate the penetration of selected microturbines. The results indicate the optimal locations suitable to place microturbines and capacity that can be accommodated by the system.