Impact of distributed generation on distribution feeder protection and voltage quality

Deregulation in the electric power industry has encouraged the move toward distributed generation. However, the presence of distributed resources can have severe impact on the utility distribution circuit protection and voltage quality. A significant amount of this research work was done to study the impact of distributed resources on the steady state and transient performance of utility distribution circuits. These studies showed insignificant impact of distributed resources when the distributed generation capacity was small compared to the total feeder load. Studies were also done to analyze the effects of distributed generation on the power quality of distribution systems. It was found from these studies that distributed generation had insignificant impact on the performance of distribution systems from a power quality standpoint. Analytical methods were also developed to determine the limiting size and number of distributed resources before power quality problems were encountered.