IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 2, NO.

1, MARCH 2011

181

Distributed Generation Interconnection Planning: A

Wind Power Case Study
Sheng-Yi Su, Chan-Nan Lu, Fellow, IEEE, Rung-Fang Chang, and Guillermo Gutirrez-Alcaraz, Member, IEEE

AbstractThere is increasing requests for noncontrollable

distribution generation (DG) interconnections in the medium
and low voltage networks. Many studies have suggested that
with proper system planning, DG could provide benefits such
as reliability enhancement, investment deferment, and reduced
losses. However, without network reinforcements, the allowable
interconnection capacity in a network is often restricted due to
fault current level, voltage variation, and power flow constraints.
This paper aims to address the issue of optimizing network operation and use for accommodating DG integrations. A new DG
interconnection planning study framework that includes a coordinated feeder reconfiguration and voltage control to calculate the
maximum allowable DG capacity at a given node in the distribution network is presented. A binary particle swarm optimization
(BPSO) technique is employed to solve the discrete nonlinear
optimization problem and possible uncertainties associated with
volatile renewable DG resource and loads are incorporated
through a stochastic simulation approach. Comprehensive case
studies are conducted to illustrate the applicability of the proposed method. Numerical examples suggest that the method and
procedure used in the current DG interconnection impact study
should be modified in order to optimize the existing grid operation
and usage to facilitate customer participation in system operation
and planning.
Index TermsDistributed generation, distribution management
system, distribution system planning, feeder reconfiguration,
particle swarm optimization, renewable energy, smart grid,
voltage/var controls.

I. INTRODUCTION
ISTRIBUTION networks are divided into subsystems
of radial or loop feeders with a number of switches that
are normally closed or opened. Customers are supplied from
different substations via routes which are characterized by the

Manuscript received July 22, 2010; revised October 20, 2010 and December
06, 2010; accepted January 01, 2011. Date of current version February 18, 2011.
This work was supported in part by Taiwan Power Company under Contract
TPC-546-4840-9802, and National Science Council of Taiwan under Grants
NSC 98-3114-E-110-004 and NSC98-2221-E-110-076-MY3. Paper no. TSG00097-2010.
S.-Y. Su is with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Hsinchu
300, Taiwan.
C.-N. Lu is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Sun
Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung 80424, Taiwan (e-mail: cnl@ee.nsysu.edu.tw).
R.-F. Chang is with Kao Yuan University, Kaohsiung 82151, Taiwan (e-mail:
rfchang@cc.kyu.edu.tw).
G. Gutirrez-Alcaraz is with National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung
80424, Taiwan, and also with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Instituto
Tecnologico de Morelia, Morelia, Mexico (e-mail: ggutier@itmorelia.edu.mx).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSG.2011.2105895

varying mixtures of the commercial, industrial, and residential

end-users who impose time-varying load demands. Tie switches
between feeders are used to conduct the load transfers to reduce
outage time and system losses. To further enhance the system
operation efficiency and reliability, many utilities rely on
two-way communications to monitor and control equipment at
distribution substations and feeders. Through state estimation,
the measurement data from distribution automation (DA) and
advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) are used in the distribution management system (DMS) to provide more accurate
load estimations of feeder sections for integrated volt/var and
service restoration controls [1].
Optimizing grid operation and use is the first priority of the
European Unions smart grid deployment plan [2]. In the future, more innovative monitoring, control, communication, and
self-healing technologies will be deployed to enhance grid operation and facilitate customer participation. The connection and
operation of DG would allow customers to take part in optimizing the operation and planning of the network.
Many benefits are achievable by properly integrating DG. A
set of indices, including 1) voltage profile improvement index;
2) line loss reduction index; 3) environmental impact reduction
index; and 4) DG benefit index, was proposed in [3] for assessing the benefits of DG in a quantitative manner. Intentional
islanding operation of DG can also be performed to support network reliability during an emergency. However, DG interconnections could also cause technical problems in voltage quality,
fault level, and system protection [4]. Their impacts on distribution network operations would vary depending on the system
strength at the point of common coupling (PCC). Thus, utility
companies have to conduct impact study to ascertain the safety
operations after DG interconnections.
Conventionally, distribution network volt/var controls involve regulation of voltage and reactive power by on load tap
changer (OLTC), line voltage regulators (VR), and shunt capacitors (SC). Automatic voltage reference setting techniques
are used in voltage regulating relay (VRR) or automatic voltage
relay (AVR). The relay could use local voltage level (LVL)
(Fig. 1) or line drop compensation (LDC) method (Fig. 2) to
estimate the line voltage drop of a varying load current at a
voltage reference point for voltage control.
DG integrations complicate the validity of LVL and LDC
control schemes [5][7]. A method for designing feasible
LDC parameters which guarantee the satisfaction of voltage
constraints for all possible variations in DG output was proposed in [7]. Studies have reported that DG units in power
distribution feeders may lead to over-voltages due to excessive
power injections. A simple analytical method was used in [8] to

1949-3053/$26.00 2011 IEEE

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Fig. 1. Local voltage level control scheme.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SMART GRID, VOL. 2, NO. 1, MARCH 2011

configurations without considering time-varying effects of

feeder loads and DG power outputs. This approach could lead
to optimistic or conservative results.
A framework that includes a coordinated feeder reconfiguration and volt/var control to calculate the maximum allowable
DG capacity at a given node of the distribution system is proposed in this paper. A BPSO technique is adopted to solve the
discrete nonlinear optimization problem. Possible uncertainties
associated with volatile renewable DG resource and loads are
incorporated by using a stochastic simulation approach. The organization of the paper is as follows. The problem formulation
and proposed solution procedure are described in Section II.
Section III presents the simulation results of the effect of DG
operations on distribution network voltage controls and possible
DG penetration increase due to coordinated control studied in
the paper. The final section concludes the paper with some remarks on DG impact study.
II. PROBLEM FORMULATION AND SOLUTION METHOD
When DG is introduced into the distribution network, depending on the loading and power factor of the feeders, feeder
bus voltages would have different distributions. In the DG interconnection impact assessment, the voltage deviations due to DG
injections can be estimated by a distribution load flow (DLF)
program or using analytical formulation. Using the feeder model
shown in Fig. 3, the following simplified equations can be used
to estimate the voltage and power flows on the feeder and check
the security constraints considered in the impact study:

Fig. 2. Line drop compensation scheme.

estimate the feeder voltage profile when placing DG units with

specific active and reactive power generations. DG was modeled in [9] as a PV node and its control was coordinated with
existing volt/var controls to minimize distribution losses. A
centralized control method to operate the control devices using
a communication system was described in [10]. Such studies
have suggested that active control of DG output and volt/var
regulators is desirable in order to allow for higher levels of
distributed resource interconnections. However, currently, DG
are often not controllable by utility company due to contract
and communication issues.
Besides volt/var controls, automated feeder switches are
often dispatched by system operators under normal and emergency situations in order to enhance system efficiency and
reliability. A simple formula was presented in [11] as a feeder
planning and/or real-time control tool. Approximate power
flow and a loss reduction formula were developed in [12],
[13] to aid the search for optimal feeder configuration for loss
minimization. The number of noncontrollable DG interconnections in the medium and low voltage network is increasing.
The impact of DG on distribution feeder reconfiguration was
studied in [14], whereby the objective function was the cost
summation of electrical energy generated by DG and from
substation buses. For DG interconnection, question, such as the
amount of DG capacity that is allowed at a network location,
is often raised by DG investors. Currently, network impact
assessments are performed by using simple screening formulas
or numerical simulations, and are often based on certain feeder

(1)
where

Voltage regulation schemes which disregard DG effects may

result in voltage violations. In this study, according to the availability of voltage control devices, two volt/var control schemes
described in Table I and Fig. 4 are analyzed. Controllers are adjusted to maintain feeder voltage within limits by using locally
and
) are used to
measured data. The voltage limits (
determine whether a controller adjustment is required. The coordination of voltage controls is based on a proper timing sequence among the controllers to reduce hunting in the voltage
controls. It is assumed that SC has a lower adjustment delay
time, while VR and OLTC would have relatively higher delay
times before moving to the next setting when the controller adjustment criterion is satisfied. The control sequence and equipment involved are shown in Table I. The simulation procedure
for voltage control scheme CS-2 is shown in Fig. 4. Control devices, SC, VR, and OLTC are adjusted within limits to achieve
,
and
until the
bus voltage target values of
allowed maximum DG integration capability is reached. After

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183

Fig. 3. A simple feeder model.

Fig. 4. Simulation procedure of voltage control scheme CS2.

TABLE I
CONTROL SEQUENCES AND EQUIPMENT OF VOLTAGE CONTROLS

each parameter adjustment a new DLF is conducted. The procedure for control scheme CS-1 is similar to that of Fig. 4, except
that the middle logic for line VR is not used.
The time varying effects of bus loads and DG outputs on
volt/var control are included by using a random simulation approach. Different types of distributions can be chosen to model

the DG outputs. In [15], it was shown that by applying the fundamental theorem of calculating the probability distribution of
a function of random variable, for a given hour, using the mean
and standard deviation of the wind velocity measured and the
characteristic parameters for wind turbine, the distributions of
active and reactive powers produced by the wind turbine can be
obtained. The proposed procedure considers both normal and
worst case scenarios by using a probabilistic approach. It is assumed that using data available from SCADA, AMI, customer
information system (CIS), the uncertainty of hourly bus loads
and DG outputs can be modeled by normal distributions with
respective means and standard deviations to indicate the level
of variations. For a new DG interconnection, typical generation

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profile submitted by DG investor in the interconnection application can also be used in the impact study. For large variations of the wind turbine output, the probability density functions of power outputs would have higher standard deviations.
When sampling bus injection data from specified distributions
for load flow studies, it is possible that the randomly selected
data could either be lower than the minimum (0.0) or higher than
the DG capacity. When this happens, they are set to the limits.
This treatment of volatile renewable energy outputs would lead
to a higher probability at the two ends of the power output distribution than that in the normal distribution.
Fig. 5 shows the proposed stochastic simulation procedure.
For each feeder configuration, bus injection data required for
are randomly
one hundred load flow simulations
selected from their respective distributions for each bus and each
. The number of the simulated operation conhour
ditions (i) can be increased to cover more operation conditions.
Maximum DG capacity at a given node of a feeder configuration is obtained by observing all security constraints in each of
the randomly selected cases (2400 cases). The feeder bus voltages obtained from DLF are used to compare the performance
of voltage control scheme CS-1 and CS-2. At the end of the simulations, the following items are calculated:
feeder voltage quality index (VQI);
average number of voltage control actions during a day;
maximum DG integration capacity.
VQI is defined as
VQI
(2)
where
is the voltage at node i,
is the bus nominal
is the preferred service voltage range, and
voltage,
is the number of nodes in the feeder. In our study,
and
are set to 0.95 and 1.05 respectively. VQI has a maximum
value of 1.0, the higher the better. A voltage violation would result in a negative VQI . The average VQI in a service area with
N feeder buses can be calculated by
VQI

VQI

(3)

To maximize the DG interconnection capacity at a given

node, the problem is formulated as
(4)
Subject to the radial operation condition of the network and
security constraints, including
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
(9)

Fig. 5. Distribution load flow simulation procedure.

where
is the DG capacity interconnected at node and
is the set of all feeder nodes. is the set of control variables including DG capacity and the status of feeder switches.
represents system hourly loading conditions.
is the set
is the power
of feeders receiving power from transformer .
flowing to feeder from transformer during loading condiis the rating of transformer , and
is the set of
tion.
is the loading of feeder during
all substation transformers.
system loading condition,
is the rating of feeder , and
is the set of all feeders.
is the node voltage during
system loading condition,
and
are the voltage seis the DG output during system loading
curity limits.
is the maximum DG rating allowed for the
condition, and
voltage level.
is the fault current at substation bus and
is the maximum interrupting current at bus connected to transformer .
Fig. 6 shows the proposed solution procedure. It is good for
single or multiple site interconnection study with or without
existing DG in the system. A BPSO technique [16] is used to
search through possible network topology and determine the optimal network configuration that has the highest fitness of the
objective function. Before the calculation of the maximum DG
capacity for a specific network configuration, a network trace
procedure is performed to grasp the radial structure and ascertain the availability of control devices in the current topology.
After that DG capacity is increased and the voltage controls are
conducted by either CS-1 or CS-2 scheme until any of the security constraints, including bus voltage, fault current, and power
flow constraints, is violated.
Many previous studies have shown that through cooperation and competition among the population, particle swarm
optimization (PSO) technique can often find good solutions

SU et al.: DISTRIBUTED GENERATION INTERCONNECTION PLANNING: A WIND POWER CASE STUDY

185

Fig. 6. Flow diagram of the coordinated feeder switching and voltage control for increasing DG integration capacity.

for complicated problems. This optimization approach updates

the population of individuals by applying operators according
to the fitness information obtained from the environment so
that the individuals of the population can be expected to move
towards better solution areas.
particle of the BPSO method used in this paper is
The
represented as
, where
represents
switch status, and D denotes total number of switches of the
system. The best previous position (the position with the best fitness value) of the particle is recorded and represented as
. Meanwhile, the rate of position change (ve. In
locity) for particle is expressed as
a binary space, a particle can move to nearer and farther corners
of the hypercube by flipping various numbers of bits; velocity
of the particle can be described by the number of bits changed
per iteration, or by the Hamming distance between the particle
.
at time and
The moving velocity is defined in terms of the changes in the
probabilities that a bit will be a particular state. Thus a particle
move in a state space restricted to 0 and 1 on each dimension,
represents the probability of bit
taking the
where each
value 1, since it is a probability and must be constrained to the

interval [0.0, 1.0]. The following logistic function transformais used in this study to update the movement [16]
tion

(10)
where
is a sigmoid limiting transformation and
is a quasi-random number selected from a uniform distribution
in [0.0, 1.0]. The update scheme is as follows:
for
for
(11)
(12)
else
end
end
end

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TABLE II
SPECIFICATIONS OF VOLTAGE CONTROL DEVICES IN FIG. 7

Fig. 7. Three feeder test system.

TABLE III
AVERAGE VQI DURING PEAK AND OFF-PEAK PERIODS WITH DG INTEGRATION
AND CS-2 CONTROL SCHEME

Fig. 8. Customer type load profiles.

Fig. 10. Daily average VQI of the system with DG integration.

Fig. 9. DG (wind turbine) power output patterns.

where
denotes the best previous position of the
particle,
represents the best among all the particles and m is the population size. D is the dimension size, , are learning factors,
and is the inertia weight. We set , to 2.0 and w between
0.2 1.2. The number of particles used in the tests is 50.
III. NUMERICAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Several systems were tested and simulation results from three
test systems are presented in this paper. In the followings, effects
of DG interconnection on feeder voltage controls are first presented, followed by test results on a possible increase of interconnection capacity when a coordinated feeder switching and/or
volt/var control are conducted.
Fig. 7 shows a 19 bus test system. The system data used are
as follows:
The short circuit capacity at bus N1 is 800 MVA.

Fig. 11. Daily average VQI under different DG output patterns and capacities.

The rating of the main transformer (69 kV/22.8 kV) is 25

MVA with an impedance of 9%.
Feeders are 3C500XP2 cables with impedance of
. There are 17 switches in the feeder and each
feeder section has a length of 1.6 km.
Typical load profiles of different load types are shown in
Fig. 8. Hourly real and reactive power demands at each of

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187

Fig. 12. Five bus example.

the 17 load buses are assumed and standard deviations of

hourly load variations are assigned by using certain percentages of the mean value.
The requested DG interconnection site is at bus 13.
A. Effects of DG Interconnection on Feeder Voltage Controls
For testing DG impact on feeder voltage, three DG power
output patterns obtained from certain wind speed characteristics
are assumed and shown in Fig. 9. Generation output Pattern 1
matches roughly with the system load profile shown in Fig. 8.
Pattern 2 has a higher output during early morning hours when
the load is low, and Pattern 3 has a relatively steady output as
compared to the other two. To model the possible variations
of the output, at each hour, the values shown in Fig. 9 are the
means of normal distributions that have corresponding standard
deviations.
Table II shows the voltage control devices and their specifications, including the control mode, adjustment range, and target
value of the regulated bus. Considering the time varying load
and DG output, Table III shows the VQI before and after DG interconnection for the system shown in Fig. 7 when the volt/var
control scheme CS-2 is used. It can be seen that during peak load
period, the distribution feeder voltage quality could be maintained or improved with a lower number of controller adjustments thanks to DG operations (Pattern 1). However, Fig. 10
shows that, with an excessive DG interconnection, the average
feeder daily VQI are lower indicating voltage quality deterioration.
In the simulations, changes of VR setting are recorded to investigate the effect of DG output patterns on VR operations in
scheme CS-2. For the cases tested, the controller setting for VR
would need to be adjusted during day times before DG interconnection. A DG at bus 13 with output Pattern 1 could help
regulate the feeder voltage during the peak load period and result in a lower number of VR switching. With a roughly reverse
output profile (Pattern 2), the tap of VR would need to be adjusted during early morning hours if DG penetration is high.
For a more stable output (Pattern 3), scheme CS-2 would have a
lower number of controller operations. Fig. 11 shows the daily
average VQI of the system with different DG capacities and
output patterns using control scheme CS-2. Test results indicate

that when DG capacity is high, those with more uniform output

(Pattern 3) would have lower impact on feeder voltage quality.
With a good coordination of the controllers, adding more regulation facility should either increase the VQI or keep it unchanged. However, if controllers are not properly coordinated,
simulation results show that with the VR or OLTC adjustment,
the setting and condition of SC might be inappropriate or even
in violation. This could lead to a hunting in the controller adjustment and deteriorate voltage quality.
Test results also show that under unbalanced feeder loading
conditions, due to DG output variations, adjustment of OLTC
at the substation might result in over and/or under voltage at
other feeders if a specific branch current measurement is used
for voltage control. Under this condition, if VR is available, it
can be used to enhance voltage controls. If not, then according to
the feeder section load profiles, adjustment of the feeder loading
by feeder reconfiguration would provide an opportunity to resolve the voltage quality problem and allow for additional DG
interconnection capacity.
B. Effects of Coordinated Feeder Reconfiguration and Voltage
Controls on DG Interconnection Capacity
In this subsection, comparisons of increased DG interconnection capacities due to voltage control, feeder reconfiguration,
and a coordinated control, respectively are given.
Five Bus Test System: A simple example shown in Fig. 12
is first used to explain the benefit of the proposed scheme. It
is assumed that all feeder section impedances are all equal to
, and the bus loads and shunt capacitance are
,
,
,
,
and
respectively. Power factor of the DG is assumed equal
to unity and OLTC uses local voltage measurement to maintain
proper secondary voltage.
Table IV shows the numerical results of test cases using different control schemes. It can be seen that without considering
volt/var and feeder reconfiguration controls (case 2) the allowable DG capacity at bus 3 is 0.438 pu. The maximum DG capacity would increase if the voltage control is included. Under
optimal feeder configuration with proper voltage controls (case
5) the allowable DG penetration could reach 0.724 pu, which is
a 65% increase from case 2.

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TABLE IV
AVERAGE VQI DURING PEAK AND OFF-PEAK PERIODS
WITH DG INTEGRATION AND CS-2 CONTROL SCHEME

TABLE VI
RESULTS OF TEN PSO SOLUTIONS

Case 1: Base case before DG interconnection at bus 3.

Case 2: Base case without voltage control and feeder reconfiguration.
Case 3: Case with voltage control and without feeder reconfiguration.
Case 4: Case without voltage control and with feeder reconfiguration.
Case 5: Case with both voltage control and feeder reconfiguration.

TABLE V
RESULTS OF FEEDER RECONFIGURATION FOR MAXIMIZING DG PENETRATION

Fig. 14. 33 bus feeder [12].

Fig. 13. Optimal configuration for accommodating higher DG integration at

bus 13.

TABLE VII
MAXIMUM DG INTEGRATION CAPACITY BASED ON
THREE FEEDER CONTROL SCHEMES

19 Bus Test System: Using voltage control scheme CS-2,

the feeder structure shown in Fig. 7 could accommodate 11.9
MW without violating considered security constraints. After the
BPSO search, it is found that a higher DG integration is practicable. Table V shows that with coordinated feeder reconfiguration and voltage controls, an integration of 18.7 MW DG at
bus N13 is feasible. Fig. 13 shows the best configuration for
DG connection at bus 13. Since PSO is one of the stochastic
optimization methods, the performance of the solution would
hinge on the choice of seeds of random numbers and the search
strategy adopted in each implementation. In our study, the performance of BPSO method is evaluated statistically. As shown
in Table VI, in most of the tested cases, the solutions obtained by
BPSO method require lower execution time, and are the same as
those obtained from using a brute force approach that tests all

feasible feeder configurations. The execution time required is

higher if higher particle number is specified in BPSO for solving
the problem. The number of particles used for obtaining results
shown in Table VI is 50.
33 Bus Test System: Fig. 14 shows a 12 kV feeder with
total real and reactive loads of 5,058.25 kW and 2,547.32
kVAr respectively. Without taking the possible gain of voltage

SU et al.: DISTRIBUTED GENERATION INTERCONNECTION PLANNING: A WIND POWER CASE STUDY

control and feeder reconfiguration into account, the allowable

DG penetration at bus 17 is 1.8 MW. Table VII shows the
opened switches and the maximum DG capacity. It can be
seen that with the inclusion of a coordinated volt/var control
by SC and VR, the allowable DG capacity could reach 3.4
MW. On the other hand, if volt/var control is disabled and
feeder reconfiguration is executed, the allowable DG capacity
in the studied feeder would become 3.6 MW. Finally, with
coordinated feeder reconfiguration and volt/var control, the
allowable capacity could reach 5.4 MW for DG interconnection
at bus 17. The voltage rise problem due to DG interconnection
could be relieved by load transfers.
IV. CONCLUSION
In order to optimize the use of the existing distribution network and reduce the cost of interconnection facility and distribution system modification, this paper proposes a new DG
interconnection planning study framework that includes a coordinated feeder reconfiguration and voltage control. The proposed method uses a probabilistic approach to account for the
time varying effects of feeder bus loads and DG output variations, and provides an optimal feeder configuration to facilitate
higher DG capacity. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Even though the test scenario
is based on wind power generation, the proposed method is also
applicable to other types of DG integrations. It is shown that
DG output patterns could have positive or negative impacts on
feeder voltage control, and feeder reconfiguration could relieve
some of the overvoltage problems due to DG interconnections.
In order to observe operation security under DG operations, the
time varying effects of feeder section loads and output patterns
of existing and new DG are considered. Numerical results have
shown that a coordinated feeder switching and volt/var control
could permit an existing distribution network to accommodate
higher DG capacity and consequently, reduce the network reinforcement investment for DG interconnections.
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Sheng-Yi Su received the M.S. degree from National Sun Yat-sen University,
Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 2009.
He is now with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Hsinchu,
Taiwan.

Chan-Nan Lu (M82SM92F08) received the Ph.D. degree from Purdue

University, West Lafayette, IN, in 1987.
He held positions at General Electric Co. and Harris Corp., and has been with
National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, since 1989. His research
interests are in power system operations and power quality.

Rung-Fang Chang received the Ph.D. degree from National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 2002.
He is an Associate Professor of the Department of the Electrical Engineering,
Kao Yuan University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. His research interests are optimization of power system and load research.

Guillermo Gutirrez-Alcaraz (M99) received the Ph.D degree from Iowa

State University, Ames, in 2009.
He has been with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Instituto Tecnologico de Morelia, Morelia Mexico, since 1996. Currently, he is a postdoctoral
fellow at National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.