Study of electricity network planning tools (Paladin design base and DER-CAM)
Student name: Ms Aditi Ahuja
Guide: Dr Ramkishore Singh
Year of completion: 2011
Host Organisation: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO)
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Dr Adam Berry
Abstract:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The rise of renewable sources and decentralization of power generation have fundamentally
altered the way power behaves in electricity networks and consequentially different approaches
are to be followed for the system analysis.
Paladin Design Base is a software tool that can be used for most of the power system analysis.
Programs like Power Flow, Protection Coordination, Optimization & Sizing, Power Quality &
Reliability, Dynamic Simulation and Arc Flash & Fault Analysis prove to be very useful for
network testing and power system simulation. With the various programs available almost any
type of electrical power condition can be simulated. Tool also has numerous pre-defined objects
and complex modelling can be completed rapidly. For most of the program data, an inbuilt
library within the tool is used.
On the flip side, the cost of each program of this tool is on a higher side. The cost of a single
program is approximately in between $4000 to $12,000 for a single user. Different licence
packages have different prices according to the number of users and the level of complexity (i.e.
number of buses) and the price range starts at $5000 and goes up to $1, 75,000.
DER-CAM (Distributed Energy Resources Customer Adoption Model) is an economic model of
distributed energy resources adoption implemented in the General Algebraic Modelling System
(GAMS) optimization software. The objective is to minimize the cost of operating on-site
generation and combined heat and power (CHP) systems; either for individual customer sites or
a micro-grid. An experimental version of the tool has been used in this study.
Key words: Decentralized power generation, Electricity network planning, Software tools, Power
system simulation, and Optimization software.
