Environmental Benefits Analysis of Distributed Generation

Abstract

The promotion of distributed generation (DG) is a direct consequence of sustainable development policy in world environment and advancement in technology. At present, DG has been a research focus all over the world. However, the traditional supervision and management system in power industry makes the policy maker and the one who execute the policy difficult to understand the potential of DG, especially the environmental benefits. Therefore, the value of DG’s environmental benefits so far hasn’t been reflected. Some indices were introduced to quantitatively analyze the value of environmental benefits of DG. Meanwhile, a new mathematical model for calculating the generation cost of DG was established based on the environmental benefits indices. In this model, penalty mechanism was introduced for the pollutant emissions of power generation. Simulation results show that the indices and new model can reflect the environmental benefits correctly and will eventually accelerate the development of DG in China.