Improving the voltage profiles of Distribution

Networks using multiple Distribution

Generation Sources
M. F. AlHajri, Student Member, IEEE, and M. E. El-Hawary, Fellow, IEEE

Abstract-- Installing Distribution Generation (DG) in the

distribution level has positive impacts on the system voltage
profile as well on the substations capacity. However the extent
of such benefits depends greatly of the DG size and location.
Heavily loaded systems need more than one DG to rectify the
voltage profile and to achieve other DG promised benefits. In this
paper the number of Distribution Generators (DGs) and their
sizes are investigated thoroughly for installing single and
multiple DGs.
The optimal DG number and sizing are
formulated as NonLinear Programming (NLP) problem subject
to boundary restriction and nonlinear equality and inequality
constraints imposed on the system. In this paper, a radial
distribution case study comprises of 33-Bus is tested. A
comparative study is performed to evaluate three DG situations.
The original system with no DG added is evaluated first, then
single and multiple DG installations are assessed later in this
research.
Index Terms-- Distribution generation, DG optimal number,
DG optimal sizing, Nonlinear programming, Radial distribution
system.

I. INTRODUCTION

N the turn of the last century, utility holding companies

controlled 80% of the electricity market in the united states.
Single company could own more than one power utility
company through massive purchase of their stocks. Of the
total of electricity, 45% was owned by only three of those
firms. In 1929 the Great Depression took place and
bankruptcy stared and continued as a chain reaction causing
investors to lose money due to the abuse exercised by such
holding companies. Congress issued an act in 1935 called the
Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA) restricting
holding companies form buying more than one utility
company in order to avoid any kind of misconduct. Such act
restricted buying and selling electricity to utilities only.
However, DG began to have a vital role in the electricity
market after the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978
(PURPA). PURPA requires the utilities to purchase electricity
Grid
for qualifying facilities at their avoided cost1.
interconnection was not allows until the early nineties after the
commencement of the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPAct).
978-1-4244-1583-0/07/$25.00 2007 IEEE

Such act opened the transmission lines for competition in the

electricity market. That is electricity could be sold or bought
of any size, fuel and/or generation technology form utilities or
DG [1].
DG is any small-scale size of electricity generation located
at or near the consumers load [2]. DG have been gaining
increased popularity as important integral components of
modern power systems in recent years for various reasons.
Restructuring of the electric power industry and recent
environmental awareness are two of the main factors that led
to the rapid growth in utilizing different DG technologies in
electric power generation.
Late developments in DG
technology also lead in its deployment worldwide. A study
performed by Electric Power Research Institute and by
Natural Gas Foundation projected that 25 to 30% of the new
installed electric generation will be DG [3;4].
Distribution generation encompasses a wide range of
technologies, such as combined heat and power gas turbine,
diesel generation, microturbines, fuel cell, photovoltaic, and
wind turbines. Such technologies are driven either by fossil
fuel-based or sustainable energies.
Integrating DGs into Radial Distribution System (RDS)
have many positive influences. Those positive impact could
be summed as enhancing the system voltage profile;
minimizing the network real power losses; deferring
transmission and distribution upgrades, and releasing capacity
of an exiting distribution infrastructure as well as overhead
transmission lines paving the road for future expansion.
Nevertheless, there are also some negative impacts caused
by incorporating the DG. One of them is the voltage rise
caused by the bi-power flow direction[5]. Concerns raised by
environmentalists regarding the wind turbine giant blades
toward birds deaths during their migration seasons, is another
negative impact of DG.
Installing DG is not a trivial optimization problem; it needs
careful consideration for the topology of the existing
distribution network, the size specification of the DG to be
installed, the existing substation capacity, and the DG type
itself. Voltage security is of a particular interest especially in
heavily loaded distribution networks. In some cases, multiple
DGs installation is required to maintain the network voltage
levels within proper limits. For an optimal operating strategy,
the placement and sizing of DGs technologies have to be
addressed carefully.

295

In this research, the DG sizing problem is formulated as a

NLP optimization problem subject to equality and inequality
constraints, in addition to boundary conditions imposed on the
RDS.
Such formulation is solved by Heuristic and
deterministic techniques. Ref [6-8] proposed to solve the
optimal DG sizing problem using Genetic Algorithm (GA).
Ref. [9] utilized Tabu-Search hybrid methodology in solving
the DG NLP problem. Particle swarm optimization heuristic
technique was used as another way of solution by [10] to
locate single DG. Heuristic techniques tends to converge
slower than its deterministic counterparts[11]. In this paper,
the optimization problem is solved by Sequential Quadratic
Programming deterministic (SQP) technique. The proposed
method is used in scrutinizing the optimal size of single and
multiple DGs to be installed in RDS.
In the endeavor of integrating DG optimally into RDS, and
to have reliable results the system loads are to be properly
modeled. Accurate and proper load modeling is of significant
concern in power distribution systems as well its transmission
systems counterparts [12;13].
The paper is organized as follows: Section II is the problem
formulation, section III is the test results and discussion, and
the last section offers conclusions.

current flow in feeders is to be kept below its thermal limits.

Such constraints are expressed mathematically as shown
below:
nDG

S
i =1

min

VY V

*t

(1)

where:
( ) :real part of complex quantity,
:conjugate of complex quantity,
*
:vector or matrix transpose,
t
:complex quantity,

V
:(1xNB) nodal voltages vector
: (NBxNB) admittance matrix
Y
The equality constraints are the nonlinear power flow
equations, as shown below
Pi = 0
i = 2, 3,, NB
Qi = 0

i = 2,3, , NB

Where
nDG
()

(4)

max Sij , S ji Sijmax

(5)

max
S xfmr S xfmr

(6)

:No. of DGs to be installed,

:imaginary part of complex quantity,

S DGi

:ith DG size,

SS / S

:substation capacity,
:feeder ij thermal limit,

Sijmax

Sij

:complex power transmitted from bus i to bus j,

Sij

: = {Sij } + j { Sij } ,

{Sij }

= g ij Vi Vi V j g ij cos ij + bij sin ij ,

{S ij }

g ij

= bij Vi Vi V j g ij sin ij + bij cos ij ,

:branch ij conductance,

bij

:branch ij susceptance,

Thermal capacity of transformer.

S
The nodal complex voltages and the DG power factor are
restricted as follows:
Vbmin Vb Vbmin
(7)
max
xfmr

bmin b bmax
DG

pf min pf
min
b

where V

min
b

, V

min
b

DG

(8)
DG

pf max

and

max
b

(9)

are the lower and upper

bounds of the bus voltage Vb and the bus voltage angle, b ,

DG
are the lower and upper bounds
respectively. pf minDG and pf max

of the DG power factor.

Residential, commercial and industrial Loads are usually
represented as a function of voltage at the load bus in static
load modeling. The active and reactive load powers are
modeled as constant power, constant current and constant
impedance or combinations of these. The load characteristic
model is expressed as an exponential form among other
representations as shown mathematically in (10) and (11).
(2)

V
P = Po
Vo

(3)

where

(10)

Pi = Pi Pi ( ei + jfi ) ( Gik jBik )( ek + jf k )

k
i

sp

SS / S

II. MATHEMATICAL FORMULATION

Optimizing the DG sizing is formulated as a NLP. The
optimal DG size to be installed in a RDS is that which
minimizes the network real power losses. Such objective
function is subjected to highly nonlinear equality and
inequality constraints and to boundary restrictions imposed on
the system.
The objective function is mathematically
expressed as follows:

DGi

Qi = Qisp QiD ( ei + jf i ) ( Gik jBik )( ek + jf k )

k i

NB: No. of RDS buses

Inequality constraints deals with the DG size itself and the
RDS feeders. That is for the case of multiple DG installations,
their total size is not to exceed that of the one DG case. The

V
Q = Qo
(11)
Vo
Vo is the reference voltage; V is the operating voltage; Po and
Qo are the active and reactive powers respectively consumed
at the reference voltage. and are the exponents which
determine the load characteristics. Specific and values
lead to a specific lode model. That is, = =0 for constant
power model and = =1 for constant current model whereas
the impedance model would be represented by = =2.

296

Certain load components would be represented by fractional

exponents, see [14] for details. In this paper both loads are
represented as constant power models.
The deterministic method, SQP, is utilized in optimizing the
DG size. As the name indicates, the solution method
successively approximates the proposed nonlinear constrained
objective function into a quadratic programming subproblem
using Taylors expansion at the current iteration value.
The DG is modeled as a PV-controlled bus or as a PQ load
bus. Most DG representation is of the latter[15]. From herein
the DG will be treated as PQ bus and modeled as a negative
load injected in the RDS. That is the DG will supply real at a
specified power factor regardless of the system voltage.

Bus No.
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33

III. TEST RESULTS

The optimal DG sizing problem is investigated using 33
bus RDS for single and multiple DG installations. This
system is a modified system of that provided by Baran and
Wu [16]. The reactive and reactive load is increased by 40%
in order to have a heavily lossy system for investigating the
optimal number and size of the proposed DGs. RDS33
encompasses one main feeder and three laterals with a total
real and reactive power demand of 5201 kW and 3220 kVAR
respectively. A single line diagram of the investigated system
is shown in Fig. 1. The substation is considered to be the
slack bus and has a nominal voltage of 12.66 kV. The base
MVA used in computation is 1000 kVA and the base voltage
kV is the same as the nominal voltage. The proposed DG
power factor in this paper is 0.85.

Voltage (pu) Angle ()

0.927
0.202
0.922
-0.143
0.902
-0.371
0.892
-0.483
0.884
-0.579
0.882
-0.568
0.880
-0.549
0.871
-0.691
0.868
-0.815
0.866
-0.874
0.864
-0.910
0.861
-1.032
0.860
-1.047
0.924
0.261
0.920
0.344
0.903
0.467
0.891
0.584
0.886
0.743
0.880
0.615
0.879
0.580
0.878
0.568

B. Single DG Case:Fig. 1 shows the optimal losses for a DG installed at

every single bus at the RDS33. Table 1 shows that for the
active power losses to be minimal, the DG is to be installed
at bus 29. In many times not necessarily that the optimal
location is available for the installation process. As an
example, in heavily populated areas the amount of noise
pollution is restricted by banning noisy DG from being
utilized at cer bus. If the candidate bus is not available
Table 1 shows other alternative locations for the DG
installation that has comparable losses.
Power Losses vs. DG Bus Locations
450

400

Power Losses (kW)

350

300

250

200

150

100

50

10

12

14

16

18

20

22

24

26

28

30

32

33

RDS33 Bus Locations

Fig. 2. Corresponding power losses for proposed DG installation at all RDS

33 system buses

Fig. 1. RDS33 Single line diagram

The nonlinear constrained optimization problem

simulations were carried out within MATLAB computing
environment using HP, AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Processor
5200+, 2.6 GH and 2 GB of memory desktop computer.
A. Pre-DG Case:The RDS33 is heavily loaded system with total losses of
301.47 kW and lower than 0.95 pu bus voltage values. Table
1 shows the violated bus voltages in the pre-DG case. As a
remedy of such situation a single DG is to be installed to
minimize the losses and to keep the voltages within limits.

Choosing any bus form the above table minimized the

network losses; however voltage values though enhanced the
voltage boundary conditions were violated. That is the
minimum voltage in the pre-DG case is 0.860 pu; and the
minimum voltage is enhance to 0.9166 pu in the single DG
case. Table 2 shows the voltage violation in busses 9 through
18 for the proposed installation of DG at bus 29. The losses
are decreased by 51% by installing DG at aforementioned bus.

TABLE I
VOLTAGE PROFILE FOR THE PRE-DG CASE

297

TABLE II
SINGLE INSTALLED DG POWER SIZE AND CORRESPONDING SYSTEM REAL
POWER LOSSES

DGBus
29
28
30
27
26
7

DG Power
(kW)
2535.41
2674.42
2391.11
2677.27
2678.74
2679.09

Power losses
(kW)
147.18
147.84
148.96
153.54
156.48
157.19

Bus No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33

TABLE III
VIOLATED VOLTAGE VALUES FOR THE SINGLE DG ZASE
Bus No. Voltage (pu) Angle ()
9
0.9472
-0.3729
10
0.9392
-0.4583
11
0.9380
-0.4483
12
0.9359
-0.4323
13
0.9274
-0.5578
14
0.9242
-0.6666
15
0.9222
-0.7187
16
0.9203
-0.7509
17
0.9175
-0.8581
18
0.9166
-0.8714

C. Double DG Case:In the endeavor of minimizing the RDS active losses as well
as keeping the voltage profile within limits among other
constraints imposed on the system, two DGs are to be installed
on buses 14 and 30. Table IV shows lowest power losses
results by installing two DGs at different bus combinations.
The combination of 14 and 30 buses kept the losses at
minimal at 67.38 kW and enhanced the bus voltages
considerably as shown at Table V. While the minimum
voltage was 0.9166 pu at the single DG case, the minimum
voltage increased to a 0.9704 pu in the two DGs integration.
In the double DG case the Power loss is lower than that of the
single DG case. In the single DG case the losses were 147.18
with an optimal size of 2535.41 kW; while the losses
decreased by nearly 54% for the same overall size of the two
DGs.
TABLE IV
DOUBLE DG CASE POWER SIZES AND CORRESPONDING SYSTEM REAL POWER
LOSSES
DG Bus DG Bus DG1 Power DG2 Power Power Losses
1
2
(kW)
(kW)
(kW)
14
30
952.35
1583.06
67.38
13
30
980.65
1554.76
67.61
15
30
916.81
1618.60
68.73
12
30
1062.05
1473.36
69.96
16
30
873.63
1661.78
70.94
11
30
1083.67
1451.74
71.04
10
30
1094.26
1441.15
71.85
14
29
924.47
1610.94
72.55

Voltage
1
0.9979
0.9893
0.9871
0.9854
0.9812
0.9800
0.9771
0.9778
0.9792
0.9795
0.9803
0.9855
0.9884
0.9866
0.9848
0.9822
0.9814
0.9972
0.9922
0.9912
0.9903
0.9843
0.9750
0.9704
0.9813
0.9817
0.9831
0.9847
0.9867
0.9813
0.9801
0.9797

Angle()
0
0.0100
0.0676
0.1157
0.1624
0.2249
0.1054
-0.0301
-0.0879
-0.1341
-0.1452
-0.1692
-0.1958
-0.1596
-0.2051
-0.2333
-0.3268
-0.3385
-0.0051
-0.0989
-0.1261
-0.1546
0.0248
-0.0985
-0.1595
0.2628
0.3165
0.5860
0.8020
0.8988
0.7956
0.7674
0.7579

IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper the DG optimal No. and Size were
investigated thoroughly. It is found that by integrating the DG
into the distribution network, the real power losses were
minimized, the voltage profile was enhanced as well as several
benefits like hindering imminent upgrade for the existing
system (i.e. transformers, feeders, etc.). The study shows
that installing single DG at a heavily loaded system is not
enough for enhancing the voltage profiles. Consequently
integrating more than one DG greatly would satisfy the
equality and inequality constrains imposed on the system.
V. ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This document
TABLE V
VOLTAGE PROFILE FOR THE DOUBLE DG CASE

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