Distributed generation (DG) has experienced extraordinary growth in installed capacity in many countries. DG can have a significant impact on both the investment and operational costs of distribution feeders. However, in many contexts, such impact is still not clear. Moreover, the impact of DG could be positive or negative and could be different for different levels of DG penetration. This paper proposes a high-level approach to estimate the cost of distribution feeders as a function of the DG penetration scenario, for different types of medium voltage grids. Grid scenarios include urban and rural feeders, intermittent and conventional DG technologies, different distributions of loads and DG along the feeder, and passive and active voltage regulation. For each grid scenario, we build the curve of total feeder cost as a function of the penetration of DG. We identify the levels of the penetration that create savings and the levels that drive additional costs. We find that, for all the explored medium voltage grids, DG creates savings for low penetration scenarios, but increases the total feeder cost for higher penetrations, which is largely driven by the increase in power losses. We finally discuss the possible policy implications of the resulting cost curves.

中文翻译：

---

配电馈线成本与分布式发电渗透率的关系——关键驱动因素和趋势

在许多国家，分布式发电 (DG) 的装机容量出现了惊人的增长。DG 会对配电馈线的投资和运营成本产生重大影响。然而，在许多情况下，这种影响仍然不明确。此外，DG 的影响可能是正面的，也可能是负面的，并且对于不同的 DG 渗透水平可能会有所不同。本文提出了一种高级方法来估计配电馈线的成本，作为 DG 渗透场景的函数，适用于不同类型的中压电网。电网场景包括城市和农村馈线、间歇性和常规 DG 技术、沿馈线的负载和 DG 的不同分布以及无源和有源电压调节。对于每个网格场景，我们建立总支线成本曲线作为 DG 渗透率的函数。我们确定了创造节约的渗透水平和推动额外成本的水平。我们发现，对于所有探索的中压电网，DG 为低渗透率创造了节省，但增加了更高渗透率的总馈线成本，这在很大程度上是由功率损耗的增加驱动的。我们最后讨论了由此产生的成本曲线可能的政策含义。