System impact studies for DG projects under development in the US

With the establishment of the competitive power markets and increased emphasis on its financial benefits, attention continues to focus on smaller, more modular resources for quick response to increased load and system reliability. These distributed resources offer many potential benefits, including: siting flexibility, fuel diversity, mitigation of emissions, loss reduction, reduced installation time, deferral of network enhancements, power quality and local reliability improvement, energy cost savings. This panel presentation focuses on how to assess the impact to the utility systems of the distributed generators in a competitive market environment.