The Optimal Placement and Sizing of Soft Open Points to Enable Distributed Generation Hosting in Southern Romania

Despite the current global concerns regarding climate changes mitigation that encourage the use of renewable energy sources, investors in these technologies still face serious problems in the projects' implementation. In many regions of the world, the outdated energy distribution infrastructure cannot support the new power flows. Originally designed for a vertically monopolistic organization, the electrical networks are not able to integrate the new distributed sources of energy such as photovoltaics and wind. These issues are present in Romania as well, where the new projects in renewable energy are delayed due to the grid connection restrictions. For these reasons, this study pursues the optimal use of soft open points (SOP) devices in electrical distribution networks to increase the hosting capacity for new energy sources. In this regard, a deterministic approach is presented to simultaneously size and place SOP devices to improve the operation of a real distribution system embedding numerous renewable sources in southern district of Romania.