Historically the distribution system operator (DSO) planned the network considering single direction flow of energy. With the liberalization of the retail market and uptake of end-user investments, either in generation, flexible demand or storage, this process became more complex. To tackle these new challenges the DSOs should take advantage of newly available data sources and technologies to further enhance their network planning tools. This paper describes and elaborates on the concept and procedures to create an integrated software tool by using data from multiple sources and existing DSO applications. The final product is designed to help distribution system operator in easier planning of the distribution network layout. Challenges of creating the tool range from quality and source of the input data to the time needed for the optimization algorithms to find the optimal solution. Finally, the functionality of the tool is presented on a case study of a real distribution network in Zagreb, Croatia.
