Abstract
Energy policies in the European Union (EU) and its 27 member states respond to three main concerns namely energy security, economic development, and environmental sustainability. All the three “Es” are pursued simultaneously with some slight differences in emphasizing the mutual importance of these, in particular the cost factors. The legislation of the EU (e.g., ETS—Emission Trading Scheme, directives) increasingly guides the member states’ energy policies. However, energy policy directions are still made domestically, for example, on the support on renewable energy technologies. In this work, we look into distributed generation (DG), since it has been grown considerable in the past few years and can be used to partially fulfill renewable energy targets. The policy makers have to make decisions about regulation directives, more specifically they have to change the current regulation in order to incentive the increase in DG. However, these decisions have not only economic impacts but also technical impacts that must be accounted for. In this regard, a decision aid tool would help the policy makers in estimating producer economic impacts, as well as power network technical impacts, of various possible regulation directives. Here, we propose an interactive decision aid tool that models the aforementioned impacts and thus, can be used by policy makers to experiment with different regulation directives before deciding on the ones to set.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Beatley T (2000) Green urbanism. Island Press, Washington
Chiradeja P, Ramakumar R (2003) Voltage profile improvement with distributed wind turbine generation – a case study. In: Proceedings of Power Engineering Society General Meeting, vol 4. IEEE
Chiradeja P, Ramakumar R (2004) An approach to quantify the technical benefits of distributed generation. IEEE Trans Energy Convers 19(4):764–773
Dolezal J, Santarius P, Tlusty J, Valouch V, Vybiralik F (2003) The effect of dispersed generation on power quality in distribution system. In: In Proceedings of quality and security of electric power delivery systems, CIGRE/IEEE PES international symposium. IEEE, pp 204–207
European Parliament and Council of the European Union. Directive 77/EC (2001) The promotion of electricity produced from renewable energy sources in the internal electricity market. Off J Eur Commun 44:33–40
European Commission. Green paper (2006) A European strategy for sustainable, competitive and secure energy, COM 105 final
ERSE – Portuguese Entity for the Energy Regulation (2002) Portaria n. 764/2002 (in Portuguese). Technical report
ERSE – Portuguese Entity for the Energy Regulation (2005) Decreto-lei n. 33-a/2005 (in Portuguese). Technical report
Grainger J, Stevenson W (1994) Power system analysis. McGraw-Hill, New York
Kwok C, Léon FD, Morched A (2006) Survey of studies and analysis tools used for assessment of distributed generation integration in Canadian distribution systems. Technical report
Lopes J (2002) Integration of dispersed generation on distribution networks-impact studies. In: Proceedings of Power Engineering Society Winter Meeting, vol 1. IEEE, pp 323–328
Lund H (2007a) Renewable energy strategies for sustainable development. Energy 32:912–219
Lund P (2007b) The link between political decision-making and energy options: assessing future role of renewable energy and energy efficiency in Finland. Energy 32:2271–2281
Oyarzabal J, Hatziargyriou N, Lopes J, Madureira A, Moreira C, Androutsos A (2005) DI3 – report on socio-economic evaluation of microgrids. Technical report, MicroGrids Project
Pepermansa G, Driesenb J, Haeseldonckxc D, Belmansc R, D’haeseleer W (2005) Distributed generation: definition, benefits and issues. Energy Policy 33:787–798
Powell L (2004) Power system load flow analysis. McGraw-Hill Professional. ISBN: 0-10-0071447792
Schneider D, Duic N, Bogdan Z (2007) Mapping the potential for decentralized energy generation based on renewable energy sources in the Republic of Croatia. Energy 32:1731–1744
Shin-Yeu L (2004) An ordinal optimization theory-based algorithm for solving the optimal power flow problem with discrete control variables. IEEE Transactions on Power Systems 19:276–286
Silva S (2008) Análise do impacto da pequena geração dispersa sob diferentes directivas de regulação. Master’s thesis, Faculdade de Economia da Universidade do Porto, Portugal
Topcu I, Ulengin F (2004) Energy for the future: an integrated decision aid for the case of Turkey. Energy 29:137–154
Tran-Quoc T, Andrieu C, Hadjsaid N (2003) Technical impacts of small dispersed generation units on LV networks. In: Proceedings of Power Engineering Society General Meeting, vol 4. IEEE
van Wees MT, Uyterlinde M, Maly M (2002) Energy efficiency and renewable energy policy in the Czech Republic within the framework of accession to the European union. Energy 27:1057–1067
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the financial support obtained from the Portuguese POCTI research fund, granted by FCT (Foundation for the Science and Technology). This work was partially financed by contract POCTI/ESE/44461/2002.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Silva, S., Fidalgo, J.N. & Fontes, D.B.M.M. A simulation based decision aid tool for setting regulation of energy grids with distributed generation. Oper Res Int J 11, 41–57 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-009-0045-7
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-009-0045-7