A Sustainability-Oriented Multiobjective Optimization Model for Siting and Sizing Distributed Generation Plants in Distribution Systems

Guang Chen,Hao Zhou,Pan Dai,Bin Chen

doi:10.1155/2013/291930

Abstract

This paper proposes a sustainability-oriented multiobjective optimization model for siting and sizing DG plants in distribution systems. Life cycle exergy (LCE) is used as a unified indicator of the entire system’s environmental sustainability, and it is optimized as an objective function in the model. Other two objective functions include economic cost and expected power loss. Chance constraints are used to control the operation risks caused by the uncertain power loads and renewable energies. A semilinearized simulation method is proposed and combined with the Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) method to improve the efficiency of probabilistic load flow (PLF) analysis which is repeatedly performed to verify the chance constraints. A numerical study based on the modified IEEE 33-node system is performed to verify the proposed method. Numerical results show that the proposed semilinearized simulation method reduces about 93.3% of the calculation time of PLF analysis and guarantees satisfying accuracy. The results also indicate that benefits for environmental sustainability of using DG plants can be effectively reflected by the proposed model which helps the planner to make rational decision towards sustainable development of the distribution system.

Highlights

Distributed generation (DG) is developing fast all over the world in recent years due to its promising potential to reduce the portion of fossil energy consumption in electric power generation and mitigate power losses and harmful emissions [1, 2]
As shown in (1), the life-cycle exergy (LCE) of a DG plant can be calculated as the sum of the cumulative exergy consumption (CEC) and the emission abatement exergy (AbatE)
The environmental sustainability of using a DG plant can be reflected by Life cycle exergy (LCE) [22,23,24, 27]: LCE = CEC + AbatE

Summary

Introduction

Distributed generation (DG) is developing fast all over the world in recent years due to its promising potential to reduce the portion of fossil energy consumption in electric power generation and mitigate power losses and harmful emissions [1, 2]. The performance of the DG plants in a distribution system is greatly impacted by the arrangement, that is, the sites and sizes, of the plants in the system [1, 8]. It is necessary to optimize the arrangement in the planning stage since it is much more difficult to modify the arrangement thereafter. Such optimization process is called siting and sizing of DG plants [9]. Several approaches have been proposed for siting and sizing DG plants in distribution systems, and brief reviews can be found in [1, 10]. Most studies tend to presume the effectiveness and equivalence of different DG plants in environment protection

Methods

Results

Conclusion