Design and planning of a distribution system using renewable technologies in a rural area of Pakistan

Authors: ABDUR REHMAN YOUSAF, GHULAM MUJTABA, MUHAMMAD AMJAD, ZEESHAN RASHID

Abstract: The inclusion of renewable energy sources in a distribution system to form a dispersed or decentralized generation network has gained tremendous progress in recent years. The architecture of the distribution system has the potential to serve as a microgrid during an islanding operation connected directly to the load center while excited fully by renewable technologies. This paper deals with planning and designing of a medium voltage power distribution system in a rural area of Pakistan affluent with abundant reserves of renewable sources of electricity. Two types of distribution system architectures, namely radial and ring systems, are simulated using a power flow algorithm with three types of renewable generation technologies: solar, wind, and biogas. The theoretical study involves realistic parameters such as total houses, estimated load, distance of the load from proposed generation site, solar irradiance, wind speed, and biogas reserves. As a result, transformer losses, line losses, power factor, and voltage profile across the load are evaluated for both system types and compared. It is concluded that the ring system maintains better voltage profile, higher power factor, and less transformer and line losses as compared to the radial system. All the relevant construction details together with the electrical and operational parameters of the power system need to be processed accurately in a computer program. Such a program has been modeled as part of this research with embedded methods and conditions outlined in this paper.

Keywords: Distributed generation, radial system, ring system, line losses, power factor, power flow, islanding

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