Maximization Approach of Hosting Capacity Based on Uncertain Renewable Energy Resources Using Network Reconfiguration and Soft Open Points

Nowadays, the continuous increase of renewable energy integration in power systems has become a global demand, especially after the urgent need to reduce the greenhouse gases resulting from fossil fuel fuels. Therefore, various methods have been presented to increase the hosting capacity (HC) that increases the system's ability to integrate more renewable energy resources (RERs) without exceeding the system's operational limits. In this paper, an optimization-based approach is proposed for assessing and maximizing the HC via network reconfiguration (NR) and/or soft open points (SOPs) techniques. The uncertain nature related to photovoltaic (PV) and wind turbine (WT) is considered and simulated based on hourly historical data in addition to taking into account the load variability. Various case studies are considered to evaluate the impact of the NR and SOPs combination on maximizing the system HC. The proposed approach has been tested with the standard IEEE 33-bus and IEEE 69-bus distribution systems. The obtained results confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed approach in maximizing the hosting capacity.