Identification of Sphere of Influence of Single and Multiple DG Units in Distribution Networks: A Visualisation Approach Involving Sankey Diagrams and Geospatial Mapping

The world is transitioning to utilise distributed generation (DG) to reduce social, economic and environmental effects. As DG penetration increases, determining the associated impacts on distribution networks is vital. This paper proposes a concept around sphere of influence of single and multiple DG units through line current analysis and integrated Sankey and Geospatial visualisation approaches. With the increasing integration of renewable energy sources and the need for grid stability, it becomes imperative to analyse the sphere of influence of DGs in geographic context. The main contribution of the paper is to present the visualisation techniques to determine the sphere of influence of DGs within power networks by considering single and multiple DGs. The proposed study combines the power of Sankey visualisation, a flow diagram technique, with geospatial data to gain insights into the DG sphere. The advantage of the proposed method is it acts as a visual lens to determine DG clusters, flow of power, coherency analysis, voltage support, resource allocation, operational planning, and grid resilience assessment. The proposed method is tested using 33 bus distribution network and visualisation on a representative geospatial map is carried out using Python library and Tableau.