Economic, environmental and technical effects of photovoltaic modules in distribution networks in comparison with the conventional units

One of the most important obstacles in the deployment of the clean technologies such as photovoltaic modules in the distribution system is their indefinite future in the coming years after the installation due to their intermittent nature in power generation because of the dependency to solar radiance profile. The authors in this study aim to analyze the economic, technical and environmental effects of the photovoltaic modules in distribution networks in the coming years after the installation date in comparison with the conventional distributed generation units such as gas turbines. So, a planning period of some years was considered and a distribution planning problemwas defined during the study period in a nonprivate environment assuming uncertainties in order to maximize the total profit of the distribution system. A dynamic way instead of the last static or pseudo-dynamic point of views was proposed to solve the distributed generation planning problem. Since the presented problem was analyzed within a few years, a sensitivity analysis on the electricity price and global fuel price of each year carried out through two proposed methods. The effect of environmental factor was scrutinized in the planning process with and without considering the emission tax. The planning problem was applied on the 9-bus test distribution system and solved using Imperialist Competitive Algorithm. Thereby, the study proved that the use of photovoltaic modules in the distribution system in spite of their uncertain nature will lead to a good improvement in all of the technical, environmental and economic parameters during the planning period. Also, it has been turned out that the total profit of the distribution system at the end of the planning study with the photovoltaic modules accompanying the conventional units is more than the use of conventional units alone. It is concluded that the photovoltaic modules can be used in both the industry and government in terms of improving social and economic acceptance in future developments. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.