Planning of power distribution networks in local energy communities

Recent technological advances, the global understanding of climate change and the role that renewable energy resources can play, along with the rise in electricity prices and little incentive for feeding the excess PV generation back to the grid have led to the growing interest among end-users in residential solar photovoltaic (PV) systems with battery storage systems. The recently released Western Australian Climate Policy sets the goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions (GGE) by 2050. The rapid growth in distributed energy resources (DER) has changed the load pattern in distribution networks (DNs). As more DER facilities are introduced to the electric power systems, the power utilities undertake more investments in infrastructure to tackle the uncertainties pertaining to DER and manage the voltage issues due to increasing DER penetration. In these cases, the conventional planning models will result in over- or under-investment choices due to limited knowledge about end-users, which ultimately leads to financial losses for both the utility and customers. In order to effectively plan DNs for the future utilities need to understand the possible changes at the end-users’ side, which is missing in the existing literature. To achieve the optimal plan for the modern power distribution networks, all parties should be considered including the utility and end-users. There is also a critical need for better network charge tariffs designs to reflect the true contribution of customer DER in the cost of poles and wires. This thesis studies planning models for power utilities incorporating a model of end-users’ decisions. This enables utilities to see the most likely possible scenarios of end-users’ investment in DER. The main contributions of this thesis are: 1. Development of a DN planning model that incorporates the expected end-users’ investments in DER. This model enables the utility to investigate the opportunities and challenges offered by end-users’ DER and p