| Large amounts of distributed generation have been installed in the grid, with even more to be connected in the near future. An important share of this future deployment is expected to come from renewable technologies, mainly wind turbines and photovoltaic cells. Multiple research, development, and demonstration projects from industry, government agencies, and universities around the world are currently aiming to make existing and future networks more efficient, intelligent, and reliable with the inclusion of distributed energy resources as an active part of power systems. Operation and planning of such systems require that stakeholders consider the benefits and problems that increased connection of distributed generation brings to the equation. This thesis presents a methodology for assessment of technical and economic benefits of distributed generation. A radial distribution feeder benchmark is used along with two publicly available analysis tools, developed to support power engineers in the evaluation of distributed generation projects. The proposed methodology is then illustrated using these tools, and results and conclusions are presented and discussed. |
