Guest Editorial Special Section on Protection and Real-Time Monitoring of Transmission and Distribution Systems with High Penetration of Distributed Generation and Microgrids

Abstract

The papers in this special section focus on protection and real-time monitoring of power transmission and distribution systems.Economic, political, environmental, societal and technical factors have encouraged the proliferation of distributed energy resources (DER), particularly distributed generation (DG), in transmission and distribution (T&D) systems. DG proliferation is already a reality in numerous markets around the world and can impact several aspects of T&D planning, operations, engineering, analysis, policy and regulation. The industry is actively engaged in evaluating the severity of those impacts on existing T&D grids and developing solutions to ensure seamless integration. The growing interest and increasing penetration levels of DG, particularly of renewable generation technologies such as photovoltaics, and the emergence of energy storage, have also spurred attention to revisiting the microgrid concept as a solution to effectively manage, integrate, and benefit from variable DG. This involves additional monitoring, protection, automation, and control challenges. Finally, it is expected that penetration levels of DG will continue growing, given the favorable business, regulatory and policy landscape, decreasing technology prices, and evolving end-user expectations (including the emergence of the prosumer). Widespread adoption of DG will increase the complexity of the T&D grid, accentuating the need for reliable real-time operations and control, and triggering additional engineering issues. In this context, one of the key topics that the industry needs to address is the development of new solutions for protection and real-time monitoring of T&D systems with high penetration of DG and microgrids.