AN INTEGRATED PLANNING, DESIGN AND ANALYSIS ENVIRONMENT FOR NEW DISTRIBUTED GENERATION CONNECTIONS

With the recent and sustained increase in distributed generation, there is a corresponding, and sometimes geometric, increase in requests for network planning to accommodate new distributed generation schemes. At the same time, many network operators are suffering a dearth of experienced network planning engineers through retirement and natural wastage. This paper considers the workload involved with planning new HV and MV distributed generator connections to public networks and presents the use of a combined enterprise-wide planning, design and analysis toolset based on advanced IT systems and components. The paper refers to a practical example of a combined planning/design/analysis system and provides comment on the business benefits that have been identified in use at a distribution network operator.