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Energy Storage for Smart Grids: Planning and Operation for Renewable and Variable Energy Resources (VERs)
Energy Storage for Smart Grids: Planning and Operation for Renewable and Variable Energy Resources (VERs)
Energy Storage for Smart Grids: Planning and Operation for Renewable and Variable Energy Resources (VERs)
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Energy Storage for Smart Grids: Planning and Operation for Renewable and Variable Energy Resources (VERs)

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Energy storage is a main component of any holistic consideration of smart grids, particularly when incorporating power derived from variable, distributed and renewable energy resources. Energy Storage for Smart Grids delves into detailed coverage of the entire spectrum of available and emerging storage technologies, presented in the context of economic and practical considerations.

Featuring the latest research findings from the world’s foremost energy storage experts, complete with data analysis, field tests, and simulation results, this book helps device manufacturers develop robust business cases for the inclusion of storage in grid applications. It also provides the comparisons and explanations grid planners and operators need to make informed decisions about which storage solutions will be most successful when implemented in operational grids.

  • Connects the latest research findings in energy storage with strategies for economical and practical implementation in grid systems
  • Brings together diverse knowledge resources in one comprehensive volume covering all major storage technologies, explained by experts from the world's leading research institutions
  • Includes detailed data analysis from field tests and simulations to help planners and engineers choose the storage method that will add the most value to their grid operations
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 18, 2014
ISBN9780124095434
Energy Storage for Smart Grids: Planning and Operation for Renewable and Variable Energy Resources (VERs)
Author

Pengwei Du

Dr. Pengwei Du is currently Senior Operation Engineer-Renewable Integration with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). Prior to this, he was a senior research engineer with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) from 2008 to 2013. Dr. Du has over 10-year extensive experiences in simulation, modeling, protection and control of power systems, renewable energy integration, microgrid, and cyber security. He has been the Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-PI of more than $2.0 million in research grants on renewable integration, demand response and wide-area monitoring and control at PNNL. He has been major author for over 50 journal articles, conference papers, and technical reports. Dr. Du holds two U.S. patents and has two pending. He is Guest Editor-in-Chief for Special Issue on "Energy Storage Applications for Smart Grid” and Guest Editor for Special Issue on "Smart Grid Technologies and Development in China" in IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid. Dr. Du was also an adjunct professor at Washington State University in 2012. He graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering.

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    Energy Storage for Smart Grids - Pengwei Du

    1N4.

    Preface

    First and foremost, both editors acknowledge Elsevier for being given this great opportunity to publish a book on energy-storage applications for smart grids. Energy storage is one aspect of the smart-grid revolution that it is taking place in all areas of electric-power systems. The application of advanced storage technologies presents many great opportunities. These include:

    • Shaving peak demand, which makes more efficient use of the transmission and distribution systems.

    • Facilitating maintenance of aging grid infrastructure and potentially deferring the need for future system improvements.

    • Competitively hedging or reducing energy, capacity, and ancillary service costs to load customers (or improving revenues to owners of supply portfolios or storage devices).

    • Assisting the successful integration of variable renewable resources by providing load following, frequency control, operating reserves, and voltage support.

    • Improving environmental performance through the use of quick-start low-emitting resources.

    As wind- and solar-power generation is growing quickly around the world, the variability of these renewable resources poses technical and economic challenges when integrated on a large scale. A variety of energy-storage resources can offer the advantage of flexibility to enhance the reliable, secure, and economic operation of a grid. Thus, energy storage will play a vital role in the integration of large-scale renewable resources, which is the main focus of this edition.

    The application of storage technologies to the electric-power system has evolved over time, driven not only by energy-storage technology advancement itself but also by the challenges and issues they attempt to handle. Novel energy-storage technologies continue to emerge from sodium-sulfur batteries, thermal energy storage to other forms of energy capture-and-release technologies, i.e., the aggregation of electric vehicles. The diversity in the forms of energy storage and associated characteristics makes each storage suitable to address one particular challenge/issue imposed by renewable integration, and there is no single energy-storage technology that consistently outperforms the others in various applications.

    Essentially, economics is key to storage applications. The economic performance of storage devices is dependent on many factors that affect their penetration and use. New business models should be invented to demonstrate that energy storage is fast, flexible, and more importantly, cost-effective. As the cost of energy storage ($/MW) drops, energy storage will become a more viable solution in a modern grid. On the other hand, we are experiencing the rapid advancement of technology at a time of uncertain structure of the electric-power industry. New market or regulatory rules could bring more dramatic changes to the path of energy storage in the future. For example, the state of California has approved a mandate that will require the state’s big three investor-owned utilities to add 1.3 gigawatts of energy storage to their grids by 2020. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) order 755 opens up competition in the regulation-service market to energy storage, and requires the non-discriminatory and just payment to all entities. There is also no doubt that reliability and economics are the two necessary ingredients for the successful application of energy-storage technology. To some extent, the reliability benefits from energy storage will be hard to quantify due to the lack of a comprehensive framework. However, this book puts some economic and reliability perspective on the applications of electrical energy storage and presents the latest advanced solutions for integrating energy storage in a smart grid.

    This book covers a variety of subjects associated with the application of energy-storage technologies, from distribution systems to transmission networks and from cost-benefits analysis and market design to reliability evaluation. This book does not go into the details of energy-storage fundamentals or design, on which there are already several published books. The purpose of this book is to provide practical engineers a reference for the current state-of-the-art in this area, and thus the book was written for application engineers rather than for a detailed post-graduate college course. The book is organized as follows.

    • Chapter 1: Energy Storage for Mitigating the Variability of Renewable-Electricity Sources presents a review of the state of technology, installations, and some challenges of electrical energy-storage (EES) systems. It particularly focuses on the applicability, advantages, and disadvantages of various EES technologies for large-scale variable renewable-electricity source (VRES) integration.

    • Chapter 2: Assessment of Revenue Potentials of Ancillary Service Provision by Flexible Unit Portfolios discusses a new framework to coordinate energy storage with a variety of other resources like generators and controllable thermal loads, which is collectively referred to as virtual power plants (VPPs).

    • Chapter 3: The Potential of Sodium-Sulfur Battery Energy Storage to Enable Further Integration of Wind describes a research effort to examine the potential of sodium-sulfur batteries to enable integration of wind for a major utility that has installed a 1 MW/7.2 MWh sodium-sulfur battery in Luverne, Minnesota next to an 11.5 MW wind farm. The energy storage provides generation shifting to serve peak demand and to limit the wind-farm power-output ramp rate.

    • Chapter 4: Application of Energy Storage for Fast-Regulation Service in Energy Market reviews recent efforts in North America for using energy storages for regulation services and its associated challenges, solutions, and issues.

    • Chapter 5: Impact of Energy Storage on Cascade Mitigation in Multi-Energy Systems discusses the role of energy storage in preventing the cascade failure of a complex grid. This method proposes a bi-level cascade mitigation scheme within a multiple-energy hub framework that considers both the economic and security objectives in operation of the energy system.

    • Chapter 6: Incorporating a Short-Term Stored-Energy Resource into the MISO Energy and Ancillary Service Market and Development of Performance-Based Regulation Payment analyzes various approaches to incorporating short-term stored-energy resources (SERs) into the MISO co-optimized energy and ancillary service market.

    • Chapter 7: A Novel Market Simulation Methodology on Hydro Storage presents a study performed by MISO to evaluate the economic benefits of using a hydro system to facilitate large-scale wind integration. In this study, a simulation methodology is proposed to model the long-term operations of hydro systems in the day-ahead and real-time markets.

    • Chapter 8: Power-System Reliability Impact of Energy-Storage Integration with Intelligent-Operation Strategy is focused on discussing the reliability improvement of the bulk-power system from the utilization of energy storage in local distribution systems.

    • Chapter 9: Electric Vehicles as Energy Storage: V2G Capacity Estimation describes how to aggregate electric vehicles as smart energy storage (SES) for leveling the intermittent outputs of renewable-energy sources.

    • Chapter 10: Decentralized Energy Storage in Residential Feeders with Photovoltaics addresses the role of decentralized energy storage in residential feeders with photovoltaics (PV).

    • Chapter 11: Operation of Independent Large-Scale Battery Storage Systems in Energy and Reserve Markets considers a scenario where a group of investor-owned independently operated storage units seek to offer energy and reserve in the day-ahead market and energy in the hour-ahead market, which is formulated as a stochastic programming framework.

    The application of energy storage will continue to expand as it offers many benefits to the grid. Hopefully, this book will stimulate the development of new solutions/applications and hence enable further exploitation of new revolution for energy storage.

    Last but not least, we acknowledge the innovative work contributed by all of the authors in this increasing important area, and appreciate the professional organization – IEEE Power Engineering Society – as a source of invaluable information made available through tutorials, working groups, and panel sessions.

    Pengwei Du, Electric Reliability Council of Texas

    Ning Lu, North Carolina State University

    Chapter 1

    Energy Storage for Mitigating the Variability of Renewable Electricity Sources

    Marc Beaudin; Hamidreza Zareipour; Anthony Schellenberg; William Rosehart    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4

    Abstract

    Wind and solar power generation is growing quickly around the world, mainly to mitigate some of the negative environmental impacts of the electricity sector. However, the variability of these renewable sources of electricity poses technical and economical challenges when integrated on a large scale. Energy storage is being widely regarded as one of the potential solutions to deal with the variations of variable renewable electricity sources (VRES). This chapter presents an review of the state of technology, installations and some challenges of electrical energy storage (EES) systems. It particularly focuses on the applicability, advantages and disadvantages of various EES technologies for large-scale VRES integration. This chapter indicates that each challenge imposed by VRES requires a dierent set of EES characteristics to address the issue, and that there is no single EES technology that consistently outperforms the others in various applications. This chapter also discusses external factors, such as mineral availability and geographic limitations, that may aect the success of the widespread implementation of EES technologies.

    Keywords

    Energy Storage

    Power Systems

    Wind Power

    Solar Power

    Acknowledgments

    This work was partially supported by NSERC Canada and the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy (ISEEE).

    1 Introduction

    This chapter provides a survey of applying electric energy storage (EES) for facilitating the large-scale integration of variable renewable electricity sources (VRES), such as wind and solar power, into electric power systems. Large-scale integration of VRES introduces significant uncertainty into operation and planning of electric power systems. Electric energy storage is considered a tool for mitigating the impacts of VRES uncertainty [1] and [2].

    In general, several criteria are analyzed when considering and choosing EES technologies for a specific application [3–5]. Those criteria include lifetime, life cycle, power and energy, self-discharge rates, environmental impact, cycle efficiency, capital cost, storage duration, and technical maturity. Based on these criteria, the appropriateness of EES for various applications has been evaluated in the literature, such as, for flexible alternating current transmission systems, small-medium-large-scale applications, system efficiency, emissions control, peak shaving, and deferring facility investments in peaking generators [3–8]. A limited amount of the reported research focuses on the necessary characteristics of EES specifically for VRES applications [4–6]. Nevertheless, other energy-storage literature can be applied for this purpose [8–11]. However, these references can either have a limited scope of EES or be outdated [4,9], and [10]. For example, [4,6], and [10] do not elaborate on battery types, and [4,8,11] are limited to bulk EES only.

    In the present chapter, the previous literature is extended by providing an updated review of the state of technology and installations of a broad range of EES technologies. The main focus is on applications and appropriateness of each EES technology for mitigating the variability of renewable electricity generation sources. This chapter also includes discussions on important criteria for understanding the potential future of EES technologies, considering the impact of distributed generation, maturity and timing, and world metal resources on EES penetration for VRES applications.

    The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows: Section 2 provides an overview of variable renewable electricity sources. Section 3 presents the current state of EES systems, which includes information on current worldwide installations, cost of the technology, and current applications. Section 4 discusses the appropriateness and competitiveness of EES for VRES applications. Finally, Section 5 provides a summary of the chapter.

    2 An Overview of Variable Renewable Electricity Sources

    With growing concerns about the environmental impacts of the electricity sector, there has been increasing interest to invest in wind and solar power. The 121 GW of global wind-installed capacity in 2008 produced 260 TWh of electricity and saved 158 million tons of CO2 [12]. It is estimated that the worldwide wind cumulative capacity reached 318 GW in 2013 [12]. In the same year of 2008, nearly 6 GW of new photovoltaic and thermal solar to power installations contributed to the cumulative installed capacity of 14.7 GW [13]. In recent years, installed solar to power capacity has been growing very fast (e.g., 8% growth in 1992 and 46% in 2008), and reached 139 GW in 2013. However, the variable nature of these renewable resources introduces a new source of uncertainty in the operation and planning of electric power systems.

    Variations in VRES depend on the size of the evaluated system and the timescale of wind variations. Proportionately, small wind farms tend to have larger expected hourly variation than variations from an entire area. For example, in Western Denmark, it can be reasonably expected that wind power may vary by 3% of its 2400 MW capacity, whereas a 5 MW wind farm in the same area may vary by 12% [14]. VRES timescale variations can be characterized as microscale, mesoscale, and macroscale. Microscale variations primarily affect regulation (seconds to minutes), while mesoscale variations affect the load-following timescale (minutes to hours), and macroscale variations affect the unit-commitment timescale (hours to days). While microscale fluctuations are smoothed to a significant extent across a typical wind-power array, mesoscale and macroscale fluctuations can be significant for wind farms and even for an entire region [15]. For example, in Denmark, small hourly variations of 10% are common for wind farms, but hourly fluctuations above 30% still occur once every 1.1 years (1/10000 probability) [15]. As a comparison, in the Republic of Ireland, the probability of a thermal-generation plant tripping in any given hour is between 0.0006 for the most reliable units to 0.003 for the least reliable units (median time to failure of 9.6-48 days) [16].

    The impact of large-scale VRES variations on power systems differs by time-scale [17,18]. In microscale, large-scale integration of VRES may require significantly more regulation reserves and frequency control depending on the power systems characteristics. For example, a study conducted for Ontario Power Authority indicates that integration of 10,000 MW wind-power capacity into the Ontario system of 26,000 MW peak demand would require an 11% increase in regulation requirements [19]. In mesoscale, VRES variations impact the balance between the supply and demand, and thus, may require a significantly increased amount of operating reserves [16]. The same study for Ontario shows that a 47% increase in operating reserves is necessary in order to deal with mesoscale variations of wind under a 10,000 MW wind-integration scenario [19]. In macroscale, VRES variations impact unit commitment and scheduling of conventional generators, and unpredictable variations may result in significant economic costs. For example, system start-up costs could increase by up to 227.2% in German power systems as a result of day-ahead wind-power forecasting errors [20]. In addition, the inverter-based operation of wind generators also has some power-quality impacts on power systems [21], which are further discussed in Section 4.1.1.

    In practice, large variations of VRES, particularly wind, have led to operational difficulties in some cases. As an example, on February 26, 2008, an unexpected 1,400 MW drop in wind-power generation coincided with an unexpected load increase and loss of a conventional generator in Texas [22]. These events forced the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to take emergency steps and cut 1,100 MW firm load in order to restore system frequency. In addition, wind generators were dispatched down three times in 2008 in the Irish power system for security reasons [23]. Such events and considerations are the basis for limiting large-scale wind-power integration in some power systems. For instance, a 362 MW wind-power restriction is in effect on the 800 MW peak load power system in the Canary Islands [24]. In the province of Alberta, Canada, the electric system operator put a 900 MW cap on wind-power integration because of operational concerns [25]. Although this cap was later removed, the system operator has been continuously looking for solutions to deal with the variability associated with wind power in Alberta, such as significant investments in a central wind forecasting project.

    Some utility studies have concluded that the grid can absorb wind energy up to 10% of the system load without major technical changes or significant costs [14] and [16]. However, the same studies have also recognized the importance of evaluating the impact of larger scale wind integration in electric grids [14] and [16]. Wind-power variations may currently be smaller than variations from large plant-forced outages, typically, 20% over 30 minutes for the former compared to 100% over seconds for the latter. However, with the expected 22% wind-power annual growth, innovation to reduce the impact of variable and distributed energy resources may become increasingly necessary [12,26].

    To deal with the variability of wind and solar to power electricity generation at large scale, several methods are proposed, where each attempt to solve one aspect of integration challenges. For example, expanding transmission and trade allows higher VRES penetration by providing higher flexibility, but is expensive due to the magnitude of energy exchange required to make them profitable [27,28]. Improving VRES forecasting reduces system dispatch errors, but does not give full economic opportunity to the VRES power generator [29,30]. Increasing dispatchable back-up power generation may improve the system’s ability to cope with dispatch errors at the cost of greenhouse gas emissions, since these units generally require fossil fuels for power [31,32,33]. Alternatively, hydro power responds quickly and can absorb some of the fluctuations in wind-power output; however, hydro resources are limited [34]. Decoupling VRES generation from the grid removes power-quality problems associated to VRES at the cost of reducing the clean energy sources feeding the grid [24,35–37,]. Although the above solutions solve several challenges presented by VRES, they are insufficient to mitigate every challenge. Electric energy storage (EES), although generally expensive, has the ability to address several VRES integration issues [1].

    3 Electric Energy-Storage Applications and Technologies

    The installed EES capacity is approximately 125 GW worldwide, mostly from pumped hydro. This capacity is about 3% of the world’s total generation capacity of 3,900 GW [6,38]. However, performance studies have suggested that approximately 8% of the total power capacity should be in the form of energy storage solely for the purpose of peak shaving and daily charge/discharge cycles [3]. This suggests that for expanding EES to include VRES integration, the required capacity of EES will need to grow beyond the estimated 8%.

    In this section, a comprehensive review of the state of technology, installations, and main challenges of EES technologies is provided. Although energy can be stored in any hydroelectric facility by limiting the discharge of water, we only consider and discuss pumped-storage hydro facilities for our survey since this technology allows for both discharge and charge of water.

    To give context to this chapter, a short description of each EES technology is also provided, but it is not intended to be a contribution of this work. Characteristics of each technology are also summarized in Tables 1.2 and 1.3. Further details on available technologies, capacity sizing, and operation of EES can also be found in the literature [1–6,8–11,27,39–44]. More specifically, the functionality of various EES are described in [39,42]; calculations for amount of energy stored can be found in [9]; and the important characteristics of different EES technologies are explained in detail in [3,4,6,41,42]. Some relevant topics such as specific EES installations for several applications, the current state of several technologies, and predictions of future technologies and developments have been previously discussed in the literature (e.g., in [8,11,39,40,41]. However, the present chapter focuses on worldwide installations and illustrates specific examples of EES used for VRES applications.

    3.1 Pumped Hydro Storage

    Pumped hydroelectric storage (PHS) stores potential energy from height differences in water levels, and differs from ordinary hydroelectric power because it has the ability to pump water from the lower reservoir to the upper reservoir. It is the most common form of energy storage, representing approximately 3% of the world’s total installed power capacity, and 97% of the total storage capacity [/kWh/cycle) [3,6].

    There is considerable interest in investing more resources into PHS for grid reliability and wind variability applications [5,11,24,45–47]. For example, the utility Xcel Energy upgraded a PHS system in Cabin Creek, Colorado, in the United States, to have 359 MW of PHS generation capacity to mitigate wind variability. [48]. In the past, the turbine and the pump were separate due to increased efficiency, but as technology has matured, one rotating machine is now used both as a motor and a generator to reduce costs. However, this tendency is not universal. For example, the Kopswerk II pumping station in Austria, inaugurated in May 2009, has a separate 525 MW turbine from the 450 MW pump. Its purpose is to increase the efficiency of each process and to increase ramping speed for peaking and for integrating renewable energy, since both the turbine and generator can be ramping at the same time [49].

    /kW), the resulting environmental damages by flooding 10-20 km² of land to make reservoirs, and its long project lead time (typically 10 years). The low modularity of PHS systems at small-scale power (kW to MW range) can limit its ability to be used to solely mitigate wind fluctuations. If a wind farm is not sufficiently large enough, it would be necessary to use the PHS system for multiple purposes (peak shaving, grid stability) to justify the PHS installation, as it is not feasible to have two large reservoirs to mitigate fluctuations in a small wind production.

    When using a PHS to level VRES power variations, it is important to ensure that the ramp rates are high enough to level the production. This is generally not an issue, but it is something that will gain importance as the penetration of these sources increases. For example, at very high penetrations of VRES, the Geesthacht pumping stations (0-120 MW in 70 seconds) may not be as appropriate as the Dinorwig pumping station (0-1,800 MW in 16 seconds) [50].

    3.2 Compressed to Air Energy Storage

    A typical compressed to air energy-storage (CAES) system uses an existing underground site (e.g., a salt dome, a rock cavern, or an abandoned mine), and stores gas at approximately 4 to 8 megapascals [3,6,8]. CAES and PHS are the only storage technologies that are currently suitable for large-scale power and high energy-storage applications [51].

    Research shows that CAES is a viable method to mitigate wind variability for wind levelling and energy management purposes [52]. For example, the McIntosh plant, which has a 134 MW generation and 110 MW compression rating, can swing from full generation to full compression in less than 5 minutes, and back to full generation in less than 15 minutes.

    There are currently two CAES plants in the world for a total capacity of 400 MW. The first is in Huntorf, Germany with a capacity of 290 MW for 2 hours. This site was installed in 1978 by Alstom. This system, initially built to support a nuclear plant, is now used for grid support 3 hours a day [8]. It has demonstrated a 90% availability and a 99% starting reliability [10]. The second CAES plant was built in 1991, in McIntosh, Alabama, in the United States, with a 110 MW capacity for 26 hours. This plant uses a recuperator, which reduces the fuel consumption by approximately 25% compared to the Huntorf plant [3]. It has the purpose of complementing a coal plant in Lohman, Alabama. Neither of these two sites are used for variable energy

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