Reliability and quality control for distributed wind/solar energy integration: a multi-criteria approach

A distributed generation system that integrates wind and solar energy has emerged as a new paradigm for power supply. The goal of distributed generation planning is to determine the generation capacity, placement, and maintenance such that the system performance is optimized. In prior studies, the decision is often made assuming a deterministic operating condition. Power intermittency and equipment cost are the main challenges in deploying a wind- and solar-based energy solution. This article proposes a multi-criteria generation planning model to maximize the renewable energy throughput while minimizing its cost. The system is designed under stringent reliability and power quality criteria stipulated as loss-of-load-probability and voltage variation, respectively. A variance propagation model is derived to decouple the voltage correlations between upstream and downstream nodes. A two-stage, metaheuristic algorithm is developed to search for the non-dominant solution set. Our approach differs from existing planning methods in that we implement a statistical quality control mechanism to reduce the voltage drops. A 13-node distribution network is used to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method.