Optimization of environmental impact inclusive cost for sustainable distributed energy resources in distribution system

The proliferation of renewable energy (RE) and increasing electrical demand stress the existing generation and transmission systems. Moreover, due to environmental concerns, the proper utilization of small-scale renewable distributed energy resources (DERs) has become essential. DERs can play a pivotal role in evolving grids by reducing emissions and improving energy delivery by providing system services like voltage maintenance. Optimal sizing and sitting of these DERs into the distribution system promise various benefits and a viable solution to overcome the limitations of large transmission and conventional generation systems and provide better voltage maintenance. Besides, utilizing realistic data generation from working plants and varying load patterns allows for better insights into power system operations under growing RE. This work presents a profit-based optimal sizing and sitting of DERs into the distribution system while considering environmental costs. An improved Harmony Search algorithm has been applied to optimize the proposed cost-based objective function, which consists of various costs in generating distributed energy while simultaneously considering the environmental expenses incurred due to the release of different pollutant gasses. Also, the generation data of working solar and wind plants and realistic varying loads across seasons, weekdays, and weekend days have been considered to explore real operating scenarios. Efficacy has been verified from the optimization results that illustrate its capability to allocate DERs in conjunction with reduced costs and emissions, facilitating optimal system operations. The algorithm has been tested for two standard distribution systems focusing on reducing overall generation costs, social costs labelled due to emissions, improvement in voltage profile, and reduction in overall losses of the system.