A DER can greatly impact the distribution grid in which they are installed regardless if a device or system will be able to supply energy or electricity to the grid that can make electricity more controllable. This can bring great impact regardless and irrespective of the side – in terms of customer point connection – on which they are installed or being used.
Today, the distribution system that was being used and utilized decades is not design for usage in large-scale deployment DERS that comes with possibility of power flowing across and from different, multiple locations. The different impacts and several challenges the expansion of DER uses are broad. The examples are:
- The reliance of several customers on different utility systems might be reduced in cases where the distributed generation is currently being paired with storage and some smart inverters. In return, this may bring great effect on
the utility planning, operations and potential cost. - Some of the building owners can be compensated for making the alignment of their individual values that comes with holistic and general needs for distributions systems. The needs are being indicated by the varying production and consumption.
- Some of the regulators are equipped to make the recovery of the shared cost in the electricity being transported with higher chances of granularity just to meet the values needed for the voltage variability. This also increases the effect on some of the operational costs and the frequency the operation of the equipment that will eventually result to reliability.
With this in mind, the traditional generation should and must quickly adapt to a “duck curve” of a day’s utility load and this requires a steep ramp up or down. Because of the intermittence of the DER that suddenly increases or stops because of the wind variability, cloud coverage, or even time of the day.
In addition to this, the distribution planning should effectively address the various increased risks in some reliability and related costs in a very constructive manner. This should also meet the regulator’s requirements for having economic fairness and some of the customer’s requirements of value.
In line of this, TE effectively provides a new set of techniques companies can utilize in order form them to address numerous challenges:
- The distribution engineers must ensure a safe and reliable operations that comes with solutions. These solutions should address the wires and non-wire different alternatives.
- The GWAC roadmap effectively shows the vision on how to deploy the TE systems in a larger scale in an operational element and environment within the electric power system that efficiently facilitates the integration of DERs and other dynamic end uses. The example of this would be connection within buildings.
In conclusion, the volume and capabilities of some of the installed distribution resources are prone to increase. And the need for the partnership among concerned parties that use the distribution grid should likewise potentially increase. This would eventually result in driving a further automated and consumer-centered operations.