Capacity Worth of Energy Storage System in Renewable Power Generation Plant

Abstract

With the advance in renewable generation technologies, the cost of renewable energy becomes increasingly competitive when compared to fossil fuel-based generation resources. It is economically beneficial to integrate large amounts of renewable capacity in power systems. Unlike traditional generation facilities, however, using renewable resources for generation presents technical challenges in producing continuous power. In this report, an Energy Storage System (ESS) is integrated to smooth the variations in renewable power production and ensure the output power more controllable. Since it requires capital investment for the storage devices, it is important to obtain reasonable estimate of the storage capacities. This project is therefore formulated as an optimization problem in determining the two dominating factors of the capital cost for the ESS: the power capacity and the energy capacity. The objective is to make the renewable power more reliable and simultaneously maximize the economic benefits that can be obtained from the scheme. To make the results more convincing, analyses in this report start with wind generation, for wind has greater variability and unpredictability than other renewable sources. Selection of ESS type is narrowed down to battery energy storage system (BESS) in the scheme. However, the methods presented here are suitable for any type of energy storage methods and are also useful for intermittent renewable energy resources other than wind.