Improving reliability of the power distribution system in Goma (DRC) using solar distributed generation

Abstract

The existing power distribution system of DRC in general and of Goma particularly has many problems. Among them, these can be sorted out: the scarcity of electric energy, unreliability, no national interconnected grid, low access rate of electrification of the city, low energy management, poor flexibility in the network topology, lack of demand response which lead to the shedding of load, unbalanced system and overload of the system. The reliability indices of the existing distribution system have been taken as the focus point of the present thesis framework. Therefore, the literature review has been passing through as the base method to calculate the values of reliability indices and compare to international standard. Based on the results found, it has been seen that the reliability of the Goma power distribution system is very poor. Causes leading to this poor reliability have been evaluated and sorted out to find out the right mitigation technique to be implemented. The major cause of this poor reliability is due to the lack of energy produced to meet every time the demand and represent 76% of all causes. Therefore, the evaluation and analysis of the available energy resources have been done to identify which kind of energy source should it be taken for distributed generation. Thus, solar PV energy has been evaluated and designed to improve reliability. Each feeder has been considered separately and the power plant design for each feeder will cover the rest of unpowered energy. The work has evaluated initial investment cost, life cycle cost of the investment. Based on the unserved energy and electricity tariff, an economic analysis was conducted for the existing network as well as after applying mitigation technique. The energy saved when a distributed generation has been applied drives to the determination of payback period through the revenue saved. The reliability indices are computed using MATLAB/SIMULINK while the modelled solution is designed for each feeder in PV system software and simulated using ETAP, whose simulation results show that the reliability can be improved up to 76%.