The 4th Annual IEEE International Conference on
Cyber Technology in Automation, Control and Intelligent Systems
June 4-7, 2014, Hong Kong, China
Application of the Distributed Generation, Micro and
Smart Power Grid in the Urban Planning
Yanwen Luo1 Jiang He1 Hongjuan Liu1 Lebin Wu2
1
Dept. of Architecture and Urban Planning, College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Guangxi University
Nanning, China
2
Dept. of City Center Design, Guangxi Hualan Group Co. Ltd.
Nanning, China
Abstract—This paper describes concepts and technical
advantages and disadvantages of the distributed generation,
micro and smart power grid as well as their relationships. The
establishment of these three systems embodies collection and
utilization of renewable energy, combination of renewable energy
and power grids, and the sharing of renewable energy. The
distributed generation is their foundation, and the micro and
smart grid are a transition and the ultimate goal respectively.
Baise Tiandong County was taken as a case study object to
discuss how to design the distributed power, micro grid and
smart grid in the urban planning.
Keywords—distributed generation; micro grid; smart grid;
renewable energy
I. INTRODUCTION
Climate change, energy shortages, ecological damage and
other environmental problems which threat the human social
development have become increasingly prominent in twenty-
first Century. The distributed generation (DG), micro grid
(MG) and smart grid (SG) have been concerned in the power
generation of renewable energy to ease the energy crisis. What
is more, the way of using renewable energy by them is
different with the traditional way. Not only rely on the national
large-scale power generation, but also advocate the adoption of
the distributed generation, setting up local micro network and
establish smart grid to share electricity through the Internet. At
present, most of the researches of energy use are focused on the
technology, and there is seldom research on relations among
DG, MG and SG. Meanwhile, few scholars do research in
application or practice of them from the perspective of urban
planning.
Therefore, this present study investigates the development
status of DG, MG and SG, and analyzes their relationships.
Some suggestions are also presented how to use renewable to
generate electricity in the urban planning of Tiandong County.
II. THE OVERVIEW OF DG, MG AND SG
A. Distributed Generation
The concept of the distributed generation was firstly
mentioned in the America public utilities management policy
act in 1978, and then officially promoted in American. The
This work was financially supported by the Guangxi Natural Science
Foundation under Contract No.2012GXNSFDA053025.
978-1-4799-3669-4/14/$31.00 © 2014 IEEE
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distributed generation refers to the independent power
generation units of several kilowatts to 50 MW, and it is small,
compatible with the environment [1]. Compared with the
traditional large-scale power grid, the most remarkable
innovation and advantage of the distributed generation is
making full use of renewable energy. Such as obtain renewable
energy locally to establish solar photovoltaic power generation,
wind power, biomass power generation and biogas power
generation etc.
However, the energy source of distributed generation has a
strong nonlinearity and uncertainty. In addition, combining to
the national grid is not stable and hard to control, which would
have a huge impact on national grid [2] [3]. This is an important
issue currently restrict the widely use of distributed generation.
In order to solve these two problems, at the beginning of 20th
century, some scholars have proposed to establish an
intermediary platform that connects the distributed generation
with national power grid.
B. Micro Grid
In 2001, USA scholars first proposed the concept of micro
grid, and then European and Japanese scholars defined for it [4].
It is generally considered that the micro grid is a system
composed of a load and a micro power, and it connects with
the national power grid through the point of common coupling.
The essential difference between the distributed generations
with micro grid is that the latter can operate independently and
grid-connected. For the external power grid, the micro grid is
equivalent to an independent controlled unit; for internal users,
it provides power with high quality and security [5][6].
Depending on the different clients, micro grid can be divided
into user grid and public grid [7].
The micro grid still has some problems. First of all, it can
only successfully operate with the national grid in a certain
range, but not large scale at present. Second, as there are a lot
of distributed generations in the micro grid system, once a
control component is out of operation, it is likely to lead to
paralysis of the entire system[3][8].
C. Smart Grid
In 2001 America Electric Power Research Institute
proposed the concept of "Intelligrid". In 2005, Europe made a
similar concept of "Smart grid". The smart grid is considered to
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be the sublimation and integration of distributed generation and
micro grid. Many people think that the purpose of the smart
grid is to improve the security and stability of the transmission
grid operation, to achieve a wide range of optimization
configuration of energy and to realize the intensive
development of renewable energy [9]. Nevertheless the most
ambitious target of the smart grid is to change the power
transmission network to information energy network, and then
ordinary residents can share the electric energy generated by
renewable energy through the energy networks. The former is a
narrow understanding of smart grid, and plays a role of
improving the use of traditional energy. The latter is
generalized, and plays a role of reforming the use of traditional
energy.
At present, there are many technical issues of the
construction of smart grid have not been solved, especially for
energy storage and Internet connection technology. Another
problem is the huge investment costs, which makes many
countries or companies unable to start such a large-scale power
grid construction [10].
III. THE RELATIONSHIP AMONG THE DG,MG AND SG AND
THIRE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
Through collecting, using and sharing of renewable
energy, the distributed generation, micro grid and smart grid
solve the energy crisis, while they sent a challenge to the
traditional electric power system. The distributed generation
technology is mature at present. It is in the large-scale
application stage; the micro grid is in the stage of building
demonstration projects; although the smart grid is at the initial
stage in worldwide, it has become a vision of future city
construction and its construction has become the inevitable
trend.
The current study on the relationship among these three
kinds of techniques is seldom. Scholars like Yang Zhuo [1]
directly analyzed the relationship of the distributed generation
system and the smart grid. Wang Chengshan [9] carried out a
detailed analysis on the advantages and disadvantages of the
three techniques. He also pointed out that the basis of micro
grid and distributed generation is smart grid, and public grid
essentially already has a prototype of the intelligent
distribution network. Zhan Jie [11] did a research on the effect
of distributed generation and micro grid on self-healing
Figure 1. Hierarchical relationship
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function of smart grid in implementation, and pointed out that
we should consider the reasonable position and role of
distributed generation and micro grid.
This paper summarizes current researches on the three
technologies and generalizes the relationship among these three
kinds of techniques is hierarchical (Figure 1): The distributed
generation is a user unit which collects renewable energy to
generate electricity. The micro grid organizes distributed
powers and connects to the national power grid when the smart
grid has not yet formed. The smart grid is the informatization
of the micro grid. It is more large-scale, stable, economic and
intelligent than micro grid.
The distributed generation reflects the acquisition and use
of renewable energy; the smart grid reflects the sharing of
renewable energy power generation; currently due to technical
problems, the micro grid plays an intermediary role. The
gordian technique of the distributed generation is how to
realize safe and stable grid connected operation rather than its
own technical problems. The micro grid is a buffer platform to
make distributed power connect to the grid, so solving the
problem of grid-connecting. As Wang Chengshan’s study
noted that the micro grid and smart grid have the same target of
energy efficiency optimization [9]. He considered that the public
micro grid is a prototype of smart distribution grid, as it is
compatible with all kinds of distributed power supply and
provide safe and reliable power supply. The main difference
between the micro grid and smart grid is the interaction with
the user. Compared with the micro grid, smart grid considers
all kinds of problems of the systems in future from the regional
power grid point of view, and it has improved communication
capabilities and has richer business needs. The study and the
construction of distributed generation and micro grid will
continuously promote the development of smart grid.
Based on the relationship among DG, MG and SG and their
respective properties, this study makes a bold prediction of
their development trend of the future. Distributed generation
will continue to gain popularity. People will set as many
renewable energy collection points as they can. The scale of
the micro grid will become bigger, and the number of it will
get less. When you cannot feel the existence of micro grid, it
means that the micro grid and smart grid are overlapped.
According to the prediction of the economist Jeremy Rifkin, in
2030, some of the visionary consciousness developed
countries will achieve the smart grid [10]. Then the distributed
power can be connected directly with the power grid, and the
power grid can be said to be a smart grid. The traditional
power supply mode will disappear and be replaced by the flat
and public participation mode (Figure2).
IV. CASE STUDY
A. Background and Overview
The construction of renewable energy power generation
should not only be the responsibilities of a department or an
industry, but also treated as the city energy strategic planning
comprehensive to bring into the categories of city planning
compilation. Especially renewable energy generation and the
local grid construction should be taken into account in the
 Figure 2. The application of the smart grid
recent planning and the smart grid construction should be taken
into account in the long-term planning.
Tiandong County is a small and medium sized industrial
city in southern China, whose energy consumption mainly
relays on hydropower and thermal power. Hydropower and
thermal power caused air pollution, water pollution, destruction
of the natural landscape and other environmental issues.
Tiandong County is a national renewable energy demonstration
county, but the overall urban plan did not consider the use of
renewable energy. The local government has been aware of
these problems, and asked for increasing the renewable energy
planning in the new round of overall urban planning.
Researching proposals that it should make full use of solar and
Figure 3. Analysis of renewable energy utilization
in Tiandong
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wind power generation; establish the distributed generation and
micro grid in the recent planning; establish the smart grid when
technical and economic conditions are ripe in the future.
B. Renewable energy Use Planning
First, it should add energy planning in overall urban
planning of Tiandong County: add reserves and distribution
analysis of renewable energy in the recent planning, and then
encourage the distributed generation. Through the survey and
evaluation, renewable energy used for electricity generation is
mainly solar and wind energy. Solar energy can be utilized in
the city-wide, wind energy is mainly utilized in the area which
parallel to the prevailing wind, such as rivers, roads and green
belt areas (figure3). For the entire county, distributed
generation should mainly base on photovoltaic power
generation; some areas may take advantage of wind-solar
hybrid power generation.
The device used for collecting renewable energy and
generating electricity is distributed power supply. Distributed
generation devices located in the client and provide users with
electricity and share the power load of the main grid.
C. The local area grid planning(planning of DG and MG)
The distributed generation is unilateral interaction with
clients but not directly connected to the grid or bilateral
interaction between grid and clients. Therefore the micro grid
construction will be included in the electric power engineering
planning of the recent overall urban planning of Tiandong
County, so that the distributed power will access to the power
grid through the micro grid.
The popularity of distributed generation planning is very
important. There are some areas of the county have been
building roof-mounted solar photovoltaic panels to collect solar
energy ˈbut it is insufficient. After calculation, the city's solar D. Long-term planning
energy resources could be generated 1.845 billion kWh / year, Due to technical and economic reasons, achieving the goal
equivalent to 67.6% of the city center's electricity consumption. of connecting the smart grid to the Internet and sharing
In order to maximize the collection of renewable energy, electricity in the whole city is very difficult in the recent
photovoltaic systems can be set up on the roofs of the existing planning. However, covering intelligent electric meters in the
buildings. While the new building have more space to play, whole city should be on the focus in the electric power
such as promoting the solar energy and building integrated engineering planning of the recent overall urban planning.
construction. The popularity of distributed generation can not Smart meters provide more information to the users and help
only collect more renewable energy, but also reduce the them control electricity consumption. At the same time they
instability of renewable energy generation. provide reliable information to the power supply bureau to
Then, it is to organize the distributed generation into enhance system efficiency. The coverage of smart meters
network, namely the construction of the micro grid. Generally, would provide critical hardware foundation for building a
the total capacity of the micro grid is no more than a quarter of smart grid.
the maximum load capacity of the higher level transformer If the construction of the distributed generationˈmicro grid
power supply or less than a third of the minimum load and smart meter can be accomplished under the guidance of the
capacity. Voltage level of micro network accesses to the power overall planning in Tiandong County, the goal of the mart grid
grid is: micro grid of 200kW or less accesses to 0.38kV power connected to the internet will have the hope to be achieved
grid; micro grid of more than 200kW accesses to 10kV power when the economic level meets the requirements in the future
grid [12]. According to the properties of micro grid and the 20 years.
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