DISTRIBUTED GENERATION: BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES

Distributed Generation units are anticipated to penetrate the distribution system within the next decade. Despite the many benefits a DG can provide, there are still a lot of challenges that need to be addressed in order to fully deploy DG into the system. One of these challenges is islanding protection. Before a DG can be connected to the distribution system, it must be tested for islanded operation. The paper highlights the benefits of installing distributed generation in the distribution system and focuses on islanding operation. Simulation results describing the performance of different inverter-based DG interfacing on islanding detection are presented. It is concluded that islanding might not be possible to detect in some operational scenarios.