Renewable Energy Integration with Grid Scope and Challenges

Renewable energy integration with grid refers to the adding of power generated from the renewable energy sources to the current grid system in order to increase the generation capacity and to meet the increasing load demand day by day with increase in population. Other than population there are several other reasons why RE integration is required, theoretically RE integration seems to be suitable solution to increase the generation capacity, you just need to add two power 250W + 500W = 750W and you will get increased power but in practical this is not as easy as it seems. countries prevailing in the RE sources and solutions to integrate it with grid in future would have more chances to dominate the energy sector.

Why Renewable Energy integration is required

1. Meeting the increased energy demand
2. Urbanization 
3. Reduce the impact of greenhouse gasses on climate 
4. Modernization of Grid due to smart city and smart grid which includes better control of power from user as well as generation side

Scope for Integration 

Power generated from the Renewable energy sources can be done at small scale and large scale within the country, by small scale means through Distributed generation, which can significantly reduce the generation capacity from the power companies side and as well as users will get cheap power, thus creating a healthy competition between power companies.

at the large scale means generation of green energy at the generation side by the power companies, and through a conversion adding it to a current distribution system, however this could be a less efficient method as transmission loss and distribution loss will be included, to prevent the loss of power, Virtual Transmission line was evolved, however as the generation increases the power loss ratio comes relatively down  or in other words power loss gets negligible.

each countries has different different capacities of Green energy, countries should spend more money in generating the solutions for integration and that becomes too important for countries having more and more green resources, currently Norway seems to be the leader in energy consumption per capita.

Challenges in attaining the Successful RE integration with Grid

Power generated from the green energy sources are not constant but variable that depends on the environment, for example wind and solar dominating the energy sources are too variable therefore it would not be wrong to call them variable energy sources, due to their varying nature, these sources introduces some challenges in integration such as 

1. Power quality issues are generated
2. Load flow issues such as missing distribution grid capacity
3. Controllability and resonance issues
4. mismatch between load and supply that is stability issues which is due to the voltage and frequency control

Technological solution for the successful integration

1. Grid friendly PV plant
2. Distributed conventional generators
3. Distributed storage
4. Distributed demand response
5. reinforcement/expansion of grid Assets
6. Revision of protection system
7. State estimation solution for distributed grid
8. Current limiter devices
9. Grid friendly wind turbines
10. Centralized storage
11. Centralized demand response
12. Power forecasting from RE
13. HVDC system
14. Power flow controller
15. Centralized feed and control

renewable energy integration with the grid have the capability to remove power scarcity within the country with a condition that there is a sufficient encouragement by the government technology wise and implementation wise.