The contribution of renewable distributed generation in mitigating carbon dioxide emissions

The traditional approach in electric power generation is to have centralized plants distributing electricity through an extensive transmission and distribution network. Distributed generation (DG) provides electric power at a site closer to the customer, eliminating the unnecessary transmission and distribution costs. In addition, it can reduce fossil fuel emissions, defer capital cost, reduce maintenance investments and improve the distribution feeder voltage conditions. This study calculates and compares the cost of line losses, cost of transmission and distribution in the case of laying additional transmission line, the cost of carbon dioxide (GHG) emission in the case of fossil-fuel based distributed generation, and the cost of using renewable distributed generation in providing additional supply of power to a small rural electric utility. Results show that optimally located DG which is renewable in nature is economical in the long run when factors of fuel costs and carbon dioxide emissions are taken into account. The PV plant is the most economical because it can be moved to optimal location, followed by the wind and hydro, which are geographically fixed.