SF PEN Winter 2003-04 DG Workshop Summary

The IEEE SF PES hosted the Distributed Generation (DG) Foundational Workshop on 18 October 2003 at San Francisco State University (SFSU). Seven instructors made presentations. An audience of thirty-five engineers, consultants and college students from the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, Nevada and Vermont attended the workshop.

	Chase Sun, the SF PES representative and a PG&E substation senior engineer, gave introductory remarks on the recent enthusiasm for DG. He noted that concern for high electricity prices, environmental protection, and power delivery reliability had spurred great interest in DG. The workshop was designed to offer basic knowledge and information to help the audience plan and conduct a DG project.
	DG Principles for mechanical and electrical systems were presented separately by Brian Sekula of Altran, and Dr. Shy-Sheng Liou of SFSU. The presentations covered photovoltaics, fuel cells, wind turbines, small hydro, conventional gas turbines, micro-turbines, steam turbines, reciprocating engines, PV cells & modules, induction generators, synchronous generators, inverters and electrical characteristics of devices.

	Willie Chew from PG&E, talked about Distribution System Characteristics. Both radial and network configurations, including their protection and regulation, were presented. Also the subsets of typical load profiles, distribution system load and fault capacities were introduced.

	Gary Olson of Cummins Power Generation, addressed the issues that should be considered in building up DG systems. He presented topics in unit sizing, emission control, load management, facility protection and generator operations in detail. He used a lot of photos and graphs to illustrate his topics.

	After lunch, Dr. Mohammad Varizi, PG&E, covered the Effects of Generation on Radial Distribution Feeders. When DG is interconnected with a distribution feeder, feeder loading, voltage regulation, voltage flicker, capacitor control and stability will be affected. Strategies to deal with these effects should be developed in the DG interconnection study.

	Following the topic of DG interconnection effects on utility power systems, the topic of DG Interconnection Standards and Guidelines was presented by Chuck Whitaker of Endecon Engineering. Applicable standards and guidelines include California Electric Rule 21, IEEE 929, IEEE 1547 and UL 1741. These provide rules, criteria, and requirements for DG interconnection studies.

	The final speaker was Anthony Mazy of the Public Utilities Commission. He had a different vision of DG interconnection. In his short presentation On the Road to ‘Plug-&-Play’ DG, Mr. Mazy appealed to utilities, developers and regulators to simplify the processes of DG interconnection studies and approvals to safeguard the interests of DG users.

	Simon Lee, a consulting engineer at Arup, said in an e-mail: “I enjoyed listening to the speakers as they all seemed to be well versed and very knowledgeable on the subject. You guys have done a great job and your efforts are appreciated.”

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