Microgrid: Advantages And Disadvantages

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2.4 Technical and economical advantages of Microgrid The development of microgrid is very promising for the electric energy industry because of the following advantages: 1. Environmental issues – It is needless to mention that microgrids would have much lesser environmental impact than the large conventional thermal power station. However, it must be mentioned that the successful implementation of carbon capture and storage schemes for thermal power plants will drastically reduce the environmental impact. 2. Operation and investment issues – Reduction of physical and electrical distance between microsources and loads can contribute to – improvement of reactive power support of the whole system, thus enhancing the voltage profile, reduction …show more content…

Market issues – The development of market-driven operation procedures of the microgrids will lead to a significant reduction of market power exerted by the established generation company. The microgrid may be also used to provide ancillary services. 2.5 Challenges and disadvantages of Microgrid development In spite of potential benefits, development of microgrid suffers from several challenges and potential drawbacks as explained. 1. High costs of distributed energy resources – The high installation cost for microgrids is a great disadvantage. This can be reduced by arranging some form of subsidies from government bodies to encourage investments. This should be done at least for a transitory period for meeting up environmental and carbon capture goal. 2. Technical difficulties – These are related to the lack of technical experience in controlling a large number of plug-and-play microsources. This aspect requires extensive real time and off-line research on management, protection and control aspects of microgrids and also on the choice, sizing and placement of microsources. Specific telecommunication infrastructure and communication protocols must be developed in this area. Research is going on for the implementation and roll-out of IEC 61850 in communication for microgrid and active distribution

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