A novel approach for distributed generation expansion planning considering its added value compared with centralized generation expansion

Technological progress of distributed generation (DG) units, global approach to reduce the pollution emissions, and creating the opportunity for local investors to participate in the generation expansion investment, are some of the important reasons to involve the DG as an alternative option in the GEP. In this regard, expansion of the DG units compared to the expansion of centralized generation units should be evaluated economically and technically. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel approach for modeling the composite centralized and distributed generation expansion planning problem in the regulated power system. An integrated objective function is presented to involve the most important decision-making factors overall the power system. The purpose is to find the optimal combination of generation expansion created by power plants and DG units to minimize the total costs related to generation expansion, operation, maintenance, fuel, emission, distribution loss and expected energy not supplied, for the decision-making period. The proposed model reveals as a mixed integer nonlinear programming where, genetic algorithm is applied to find the optimal solution which contains the capacity, technology and operation strategy of non-stochastic DG units that will be optimally allocated into some distribution feeders. Results confirm the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed approach