Proceedings of the 33rd European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL 2023)
Edited by Mário P. Brito, Terje Aven, Piero Baraldi, Marko Čepin and Enrico Zio
©2023 ESREL2023 Organizers. Published by Research Publishing, Singapore.
doi: 10.3850/978-981-18-8071-1_P447-cd
Connection Capability of Distributed Generation Units in A Power System under
Active Network Management
Juan SUN
Service de Métrologie Nucléaire, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. E-mail:juan.sun@ulb.be
Pierre-Etienne LABEAU
Service de Métrologie Nucléaire, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. E-mail:Pierre.Etienne.Labeau@ulb.be
In a power system featuring a large share of distributed generations (DGs), the variability of power supply results
in various issues in the implementation of more DG units incorporation to the existing distribution networks,
particularly, congestion risk. Active Network Management (ANM) could provide (almost) real-time control, by
possibly curtailing their production in case of grid congestion so as to allow more DG units integration, while
deferring costly and time-consuming network upgrades. This paper provides a methodology for the fast
assessment of the connection capability of DG units to a grid in ANM scheme, based on efficient Monte Carlo
sampling. Besides, resorting to correlated sampling, it is possible to simultaneously estimate the congestion risk
with and without connecting a new DG unit of variable capacity. This significantly reduces the computation
burden in assessing the connection capability of a grid. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated
on a test power grid.
Keywords: Active Network Management, distributed generation, curtailment, efficient Monte Carlo Sampling,
congestion risk, correlated sampling.
1. Introduction
Towards the road of energy transition, the
amount of decentralized production connected to
the Medium-Voltage (MV) power system is
significantly increasing. As a consequence, when
the power produced is not consumed locally,
reverse power flows are injected into the High-
Voltage (HV) grid. More frequent line
congestions and voltage problems are likely to
occur. However, the appearance of Active
Network Management (ANM), emerged as
(almost) real-time control of power, voltage and
frequency within a network (Järventaustac et al.
2010), could provide an effective solution for
operating the injection of energy produced by
Distributed Generation (DG) units to the grid, by
possibly curtailing their production in case of
grid congestion. It will help optimize both the
use of the present grid infrastructure and the
number of connected DG units. These
interruptible connections offered to DG
customers (also known as Non-Firm Generators,
NFGs), combined with a set of rules about the
order they are dispatched or curtailed under an
ANM scheme, would maximize the use of
renewable generation, and allow connection of
larger generators. The curtailment rules are
actually the Principle of Access (PoA) rules, e.g.
Last-In-First-Out (LIFO) and Pro-Rata schemes.
The former one means that the first NFG to sign
a contract in the ANM scheme is always the last
one to be curtailed. It is easily implemented and
does not affect existing generators, but might
discourage investment in future DG development.
When abide by Pro-Rata rule, the required
curtailment is shared between all NFG units,
proportionally to the rated capacity or actual
output of the generators. It also signifies that
revenue losses are shared equally.
With an ANM arrangement deploying different
PoA schemes among the connected units, more
DG units are likely to be incorporated into the
distribution power system. The impact of an
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