Abstract
Distributed Generation (DG) level of penetration is expected to be increasing due to the state and federal government’s mandates for utilization of renewable resources. State of California’s renewable standards [1], and the U.S. solar installations rapidly growing to 2.15GW in grid tied installed capacity in 2010 [2] are examples of such assertive mandated programs. The current Distribution Network (DN) was not originally designed for integration of DG at such high penetration levels. Improvements will need to be made to DN to facilitate safe and reliable interconnection of DG at higher penetration levels. This paper gathers and documents the major concerns such as; voltage, protection, and power quality related to DG interconnections as well as the issues with the existing design standards and criteria. Several different DN changes have been proposed to help resolve these issues. The focus of this paper is about the exiting DN topology and DG integration issues, as well as documentation and discussion of the proposed solutions. Additional areas of research are identified for further consideration.