ANNOUNCEMENTS
The energy sector is going through a paradigm shift where renewable energy sources are being mainstreamed in order to reverse climate change. Solar energy is going to play a major role in future energy systems. This can be seen in all major countries where price of solar PV is falling and is being promoted by all governments. India has set targets to achieve a solar power generation capacity of 100 GW by 2022, in which 40 GW has to come from rooftop solar systems. Both central and state governments have made policies accordingly to promote rooftop solar. As the penetration of rooftop solar is increasing the distribution utilities are starting to experience issues related to voltage, loading of equipment and power quality. This is because the traditional distribution networks are not designed to integrate distribution generation (DG) in large capacities. So in order to accommodate the growing DG capacity efficiently these affects need to be studied and addressed. One way of achieving this is to integrate a hosting capacity analysis of distribution network in the planning framework. Hosting Capacity (HC) is defined as the amount of distributed energy resources that can be incorporated into a given distribution network while keeping its performance within an acceptable range. This method is popularized in different parts of world where the distributed solar is already installed in large capacities. So this study envisages to present a stochastic approach based algorithm to evaluate hosting capacity and present recommendations for developing hosting capacity analysis framework for a utility. The demonstration study is carried out in DIgSILENT PowerFactory.
Key words: hosting capacity, rooftop solar, distribution network, stochastic approach.
