Evaluation of innovative approaches in active distribution network management via time-series simulations

Abstract

European directives for renewable energies and decreasing costs of these alternative generation technologies are incentivising a transformation of the electricity markets, grid infrastructure and the way the grid is operated. Distribution networks, which were not traditionally designed to host generation, have to deal now with distributed energy resources that feed intermittent power into the grid. Thus, due to the fact that excess energy from these intermittent sources cannot be hosted, not only the need of energy storage in power systems has emerged but also of new control strategies in the eld of grid planning such as demand response or curtailment of generation units. In order to take SmartGrid elements and control strategies into the planning stage, the ETH Zurich spin-o Adaptricity has developed DPG.sim, a time-series simulation software that can overcome traditional grid planning software limitations in representing the behavior of SmartGrid elements for grid planning studies. Within the traditional grid extension planning, this thesis addresses the implementation of an automatic grid upgrade algorithm to be used with DPG.sim to automatically select which elements must be substituted. This work also demonstrates, using temporal simulations in DPG.sim, the scope of active network management strategies to enlarge grid hosting capacity of distributed energy generation. Thus, it will show how these strategies can reduce the technical challenges faced by Distribution System Operators (DSOs) such as overvoltages and line overloadings.