THE GROWTH OF DISTRIBUTED GENERATION IN GREAT BRITAIN AND ASSOCIATED CHALLENGES

Abstract

Great Britain has reached high penetrations of intermittent Distributed Generation (DG), which has influenced many aspects of power system planning and operation. There has been a lack of technical requirements for DG to provide grid support and for network operators to monitor, control and gather detailed information of DG installations. The work reported in this paper has explored available data sources to provide better visibility of the amount, size and type of DG installed at various locations in the distribution networks and evaluated it alongside whole electricity system trends. Several of the issues associated with a high volume of generation being unobservable and uncontrollable are surveyed and discussed, such as active network management and coordination of transmission and distribution (T & D) networks. Finally, the paper discusses system resilience, emphasising that DG loss-of-mains protection continues to present a threat to system security and DG adds uncertainty to the effectiveness of automatic defence mechanisms. The latter issues were brought into focus following a system disturbance in GB on August 9th, 2019 and are reflected on in this study.