A fuzzy environmental-technical-economic model for distributed generation planning

To determine the optimal size, location and also the proper technology of distributed generation (DG) units in distribution systems, a static fuzzy multiobjective model is proposed in this paper. The proposed model can concurrently optimize a number of conflicting and competing objective functions including economic, technical and environmental attributes. The economic function is the profit of a distribution company (DisCo) from selling the DG output power to its customers. The contribution of this model is the consideration of some DG marginal revenues in the economic function. Inclusion of marginal revenues would not only reduce the investment risks of DG technologies, but also would enable the optimal penetration of DG units. The proposed DG planning framework considers various DG technologies such as photovoltaic (PV), wind turbine (WT), fuel cell (FC), micro-turbine (MT), gas turbine (GT) and diesel engine (DE). The system uncertainties (including those for the energy demand, energy price and DG technologies operating and investment costs) are modeled using fuzzy numbers. The numerical case studies have been carried out using the IEEE 37-node distribution test system to demonstrate the performance of the proposed DG planning model. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.