Power Planning in a Smart Grid Environment - Case Study of South Africa

South Africa’s Government policy embraces the inclusion of distributed energy resources (DER), namely: renewable energy generation, embedded generation (EG) or distributed generation (DG) in the future national generation mix. The renewable energy program incorporates wind power, concentrated solar power (CSP), solar photo-voltaic (PV), landfill, and mini/micro hydro, and envisages a total of 17.8 GW of electricity generation from renewable energy sources by 2030. By implication, the number of generators connected to the Eskom Transmission and Distribution networks will increase significantly over this period. Eskom, South Africa’s dominant national electric power utility is responsible for the distribution network in predominately rural areas and smaller towns. The distribution in the cities is performed by the local municipalities. Most of the new initiatives such as increased distributed generation, advanced demand side management and plug-in electric vehicles will affect the way in which the distribution network is planned, designed and operated. This paper addresses South Africa’s renewable energy program and Eskom’s renewable energy generation grid connection process. It then proposes a standardized approach on the best practice in which distribution networks should be planned, designed and operated in South Africa using the SMART Grid approach. Challenges for integrating DER into the existing grid are discussed, as well as strategies to support DER grid integration which can be adopted by other electric utilities.