A Practical Implementation of Non-Wires Alternatives in Low Voltage AC Networks

The potential of DERs to act as non-wires alternatives (NWA) has been widely studied. This paper focuses on low voltage AC systems (LVAC) because they present various challenges: they have high upgrade costs and a very large number of nodes. To obtain the cost-optimal NWA portfolio (DER type, location and size) for LVAC upgrade deferral without increasing the computational burden, we introduce an incremental injection batch runs approach to calculate sensitivity-based values for each node. Ranking the nodes based on this value allows us to decrease the problem size by excluding bottom-ranked locations. Further, we use the sensitivities to form an optimal power flow whose output is the optimal DER portfolio and corresponding optimal sites and sizes. A case study based on an actual utility meshed distribution network has been presented to demonstrate the proposed framework.