Determining the Minimal Power Capacity of Energy Storage to Accommodate Renewable Generation

The increasing penetration of renewable generation increases the need for flexibility to accommodate for growing uncertainties. The level of flexibility is measured by the available power that can be provided by flexible resources, such as dispatachable generators, in a certain time period under the constraint of transmission capacity. In addition to conventional flexible resources, energy storage is also expected as a supplementary flexible resource for variability accommodation. To aid the cost-effective planning of energy storage in power grids with intensive renewable generation, this study proposed an approach to determine the minimal requirement of power capacity and the appropriate location for the energy storage. In the proposed approach, the variation of renewable generation is limited within uncertainty sets, then a linear model is proposed for dispatchable generators and candidate energy storage to accommodate the variation in renewable generation under the power balance and transmission network constraints. The target of the proposed approach is to minimize the total power capacity of candidate energy storage facilities when the availability of existing flexible resources is maximized. After that, the robust linear optimization method is employed to convert and solve the proposed model with uncertainties. Case studies are carried out in a modified Garver 6-bus system and the Liaoning provincial power system in China. Simulation results well demonstrate the proposed optimization can provide the optimal location of energy storage with small power capacities. The minimal power capacity of allocated energy storage obtained from the proposed approach only accounts for 1/30 of the capacity of the particular transmission line that is required for network expansion. Besides being adopted for energy storage planning, the proposed approach can also be a potential tool for identifying the sufficiency of flexibility when a priority is given to renewable generation.