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Top1. Introduction
The availability of renewable energy resources in developing countries is playing a decisive role in the economic growth of the nations; recent studies have shown that there is a positive relationship between the levels at which the countries are developing and the level at which their energy consumption is increasing (Timothy,2020). The present world’s energy reserves are very limited; therefore it’s quite impossible to continue relying solely on existing conventional sources of energy. With everyday increasing energy demands and abrupt reduction in fossil fuel, the need for a cleaner environment and reduction in greenhouse gases emissions enhance the necessity of DG(Vikas,2016). The use of distributed energy resources has over the years brought many incentives as a result of changes in the generation and transmission paradigm. DG resources more specifically the ones with facilities based on the recent technologies (PV Arrays, wind energy, fuel cells, micro-turbine, etc.) have a significant role in supporting the available energy supply to meet demand. DGs involve small capacity power that sizes not less than 10kW up to 10 MW that is usually connected at major load centers (Mustapha, 2020).
Utility are been economically penalized due to high losses in the system (if the losses go beyond the standard limit) whereas it makes a profit if the losses are less. In addition to that, the efficiency of energy transmission to the end-users is significantly reduced as a result of high active power loss in the MG (Shashank,2020). Hence, active power loss drop has gained more attention from utilities. Also, reactive power loss reduction is an important objective of DG optimal placement. Furthermore, distribution system planning by optimal placement helps in reducing resistive (
) and imaginary (
) losses as well as drops in the voltage magnitude level in the distribution network. These utilities are now seeking recent technologies that will provide highly efficient, reliable, and high-quality power to their customers in a restructured power industry. This brings rapid and continuous development in DG integration globally; this is because of its smaller size, low cost, and high potentiality of lesser environmental impacts (Pandian, 2018).
The main motivation to carry out this work is that lower the efficiency of Micro Grid (MG), and to improve it DG plays a vital role. With DG the MG owners will have an access to the DNS as an independent energy producer. MG with DG units to provide better efficiency of the systems and guaranteeing adequate security and reliability levels. But the integration of DG into the systems also increases the level of uncertainties involves in the systems planning and operation. Hence, the need for suitable methods to be developed to study and predicts system's performance. Several factors need to be defined for the design of MG with DG units, these factors include, the preeminent technology to be used, the capacities of the DG, its number, its location, and network connection methods, etc. The DG has many impacts on the systems operating behavior such as power losses, system reliability, voltage profile, environmental impacts, and many more. Hence these impacts need to be carefully evaluated. Therefore these motivate the authors to come with this methodology for the best position and optimum capacity of DG in MG.