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Applying Battery Energy Storage to Enhance the Benets of Photovoltaics

Feng Cheng, Steve Willard, Jonathan Hawkins, Member, IEEE, Brian Arellano, Olga Lavrova, Member, IEEE, Andrea Mammoli

AbstractRenewable resources are becoming more and more obtainable and affordable due to the development of technology and the enactment of government policies. Electric utilities are required to deliver reliable power to customers and must operate utility grids within strict voltage limits. As renewable energy becomes a larger player amongst the resources supplying energy to these grids, issues begin arising due to the intermittent nature of these resources. The output from solar power aligns reasonably well daytime consumption on the electricity grid, reducing the need for new coal power stations. However, high penetration photovoltaic (PV), can lead to voltage instability due to intermittencies related to cloud cover. If the PV power is injected into a power system directly on a large scale, it may produce issues related to dispatchability, reliability and stability. It is desirable to select a smoothing storage algorithm that would lter out the highest rate transitions, but would still be fast enough to avoid signicant lag with respect to current power production. For traditional testing, a moving average algorithm was used. For comparison, the author has tested two other algorithms. The results are being compared, showing that the dual moving average smoothing algorithm has merits in improving smoothness. Index TermsBattery storage system,peak smoothing, Renewable Energy, Photovoltaics, Smart Grid, power , energy.

Fig. 1.

Energy storage system

I. I NTRODUCTION ARIOUS storage solutions are becoming a much needed component in recent Smart Grid demonstration projects. Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM), in collaboration with other partners, is spearheading a Smart Grid Demonstration project that will couple an advanced lead acid battery with the output of a 500 kW substation-cited PV installation [1]. The main objectives of this demonstration project are two-fold: (1) simultaneous smoothing of the Photovoltaic plant output by fast-response counter-action from the battery (2) demonstration of power peak shifting from the typical midday peak by planned (slow) action from the battery [2]. Within this paper, we focus on the rst objective: smoothing. During smoothing, a battery is charged or discharged in order to compensate for the intermittencies of the PV output. The battery makes the output smooth through fast charging and discharging to the feeder every second. When the battery is connected with a PV power in parallel, the resulting power penetrating into the grid is controlled. Many similar energy
This work was supported in part by the following grants: EPRI P.A. EP P32412/C15054 and DOE -PNM DE-OE000230. O. Lavrova and F. Cheng are with Department of Electrical Engineering, University of New Mexico, USA (e-mail: olavrova@ece.unm.edu). A. Mammoli is with Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of New Mexico, USA. S. Willard, J. Hawkinsand, and B. Arellano are with the Public Utility Service Company of New Mexico (PNM), Albuquerque, NM, 87106 USA

storage systems are proposed on this subject [3], [4]. However, how to set the parameters of smoothing is not covered.In this paper, we focus on the relationship between the parameters of smoothing and smoothing outputs. There are a lot of parameters inuencing the results of smoothing. The capacity, the charging and discharging rates and the ramping rate of the battery power output are needed to be studied in order to have an optimization of smoothing. The moving average algorithm is designed to calculate the rate of charging and discharging based on the real time PV output. For the alternative methods, the author has tested two other algorithms: dual moving average algorithm and moving median algorithm. A dual sliding window algorithm is found to further improve the smoothness. The system is being rigorously modeled (using GridLAB-D and Matlab) in order to derive the optimal control algorithms and operating parameters that then will be tested in various congurations to validate or correct predicted models. This paper describes the results of the modeling so far. II. T HE E NERGY STORAGE S YSTEM The energy storage system includes a PV array and a battery storage system(BESS). The BESS was manufatured by East Penn Manufacturing Company, and is composed of 3 parts: the battery system, power conversion system (PCS) and a controller system. Figure 1 shows the schematic of this system.

A. Photovoltaic Array The solar PV array produces 500 kW as its peak power output. Five irradiance sensors collect solar ux information in different position of the array. This information can be used to correlate with the weather patterns and/or to provide realtime date for smoothing algorithms.

B. Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) To smooth variations in the output of solar power, the battery in the storage system needs to be charged and discharged at high rates. Standard Valve Regulated Lead-Acid (VRLA) battery can not meet the need in such situation. Two technologies can address this problem. The rst technology used in the smoothing battery is the UltraBattery, which is a VRLA battery exhibiting ultra-capacitor features for rapid discharge applications. The second used is the Advanced Carbon Battery, which is a VRLA battery exhibiting significantly longer cycle-life than standard VRLA technology and is used in a shifting application, as opposed to smoothing. The combination of these two battery technologies enables long-life VRLA batteries to be deployed with Solar PV power plants to both smooth power generation that is interrupted by variable clouds, and shift power generation to times of high power demand. In this system, the power of the smoothing battery system is 0.5 MW. C. Power Conversion System(PCS) PCS consists of two converters and one inverter. The two converters are separately connected with shifting and smoothing battery systems in order to convert the DC of battery into a DC voltage of 600 Volts. Then the two converters are connected with one inverter which inverts DC into AC. The PCS collects and logs the data, such as DC voltage, DC current of the two batteries, and AC current, voltage of inverted battery output power. D. Controller System The controller system is dedicated to derive the active and reactive power references for the battery systems. At the same time, the controller system collects all of the information of the battery systems, and sends the control signal to the PCS. Controller system gets the information from PCS and monitoring. The information includes power output and status of charging for both shifting battery and smoothing battery. The power reference derived goes to the PCS. The convertors of PCS use the active power reference to regulate the power output of battery. III. SMOOTHING ALGORITHM Our goal is to use the battery to compensate for the difference between the power reference and real-time PV output or the irradiance values. We need to track the PV output or the irradiance values while making the power reference as close as possible with the real PV output, while making it as smooth as possible. The moving average algorithm is commonly used to calculate the power reference. The only parameter for moving average algorithm is time interval over which the average is calculated, i.e. the window size. Different window size will lead to different power reference with different smoothness. Independently of the weather pattern, larger window size leads to a smoother battery output,and more data points will result in smoother output as well. Hence, a large window

Fig. 2.

The irradiance of a cloudy day

Fig. 3.

The maximum smoothing power needed

size is an important parameter to get a smooth output. The window size can be chosen based on the requirement of the smoothness. Different window sizes lead to the compensated power output with different smoothness. So it inuences the battery behavior in following aspects: the maximum charging rate and discharging rate needed, the status of charging and the ramping rate needed. Decisions on the charging and discharging rates will depend heavily on the weather conditions during a particular day. One typical cloudy day is used to illustrate our ndings. The day is shown in gure 2 . A. Maximum Charging Rate and Discharging Rate The power needed from the battery is equal and less than the maximum generated PV power, which means the power needed will not exceed the rating of PV power. In this system, the PV plant capacity is 500 kW. So the 500kW battery is enough for this system. Next, we study how much power is needed in reality. The battery will output power according to how much power is needed in order to get the best smoothing result. Figure 3 shows that maximum power ranges around from 50 % to 70 % of the rated power when the sliding window sizes are from 10 minutes to 120 minutes. The maximum power happens when the sliding window size equals 80 minutes. B. Status of Charging Figure 4 shows that the status of charging (SoC) varies with the sliding window size appropriate for this weather. For this battery storage system project performance is based upon

Fig. 4.

State of charge for different window sizes

Fig. 6. The comparison of smoothing results between with and without restoring power Fig. 5. Restoring power

maintaining SoC within a +/- 100 kWhrs while maintaining an average SoC over a 1 hour period equal to the nominal SoC. According to this constraint, SoC needs to be maintained between 10 % and 90 % of the rating 250 kWhrs. Storing power is needed in addition to the smoothing in order to offset the battery losses. C. Ramping Rate Another important concern with the control of BESS is the charge/discharge rates (or ramprates), which needs to be kept under the manufacturers specied values. It is the rate of change in the instantaneous output from a battery. The ramping rate is established to prevent undesirable damaging due to rapid changes in charging or discharge of a battery. The ramping rate limit of battery is 100 kW/sec. The ramping rate does not increase as the sliding window size increases. In the above case, we do not set a limit to the ramping rate. The ramping rates for a sliding window size between 600s and 7200s are almost the same. The ramping rate is in the range of +/-60kw (except for one point). Most of ramping rates vary between +40kw/s and -40kw/s. In summary, for this project the maximum charging rate and discharging rate is large enough for any subset sizes between 10 and 120 minutes. The ramping rates of battery are almost same for any subset size. The only signicant difference is the change of SoC. The larger subset size will make the SoC deviate from nominal SoC fast than the smaller subset size do. A restoring power is needed to maintain the SoC. D. Restoring Power Restoring power is used to restore the battery to the nominal SoC, and, is typically inversely proportional to the SoC at the moment [3]. The restoring power will change every second

with the change of SoC. So the battery output is the sum of two parts. One is the difference between power reference and real time PV output, which is used to make the PV output smooth. Another is restoring power, which is used to maintain the SoC. Since the restoring power is not smooth, it will result in multiple smaller spikes within the smoothing output. In this paper, we use a new method to solve this problem. The restoring power is calculated each half hour according to SoC. Since the restoring power is constant for each half hour instead of every second, it will not inuence the smoothing result. Figure 5 shows the calculated restoring power. Figure 6 shows the smoothing results are almost same smooth for both cases, but the SoC of battery using restoring power is much closer to 50 % of rating than not using restoring power. In summary, the restoring power can help restore the capacity of battery, but does not affect the smoothness of PV output. IV. T HE C OMPARISION OF T HREE S MOOTHING A LGORITHMS The author has analyzed three smoothing algorithms, namely: moving average, dual moving average and moving median. Moving average algorithm calculates the average of a subset and is well known. In order to make the output smoother, the moving average algorithm can be used twice. But the subset is half of size which is used for moving average algorithm. For example the moving average algorithm uses the 600 seconds as the size of subset, the dual moving average algorithm use the moving average algorithm twice over the 300 seconds subset. These two algorithms can have same lag. The result will be smoother than that from using moving average algorithm once. From gure 7, we can see the result from dual moving average algorithm is smoother than moving average algorithm. From a statistical point of view, the moving median can track the trend of the PV outputs better than moving average

V. HOW TO CHOOSE THE WINDOW SIZE There is a tradeoff between the smoothness and lifetime of a battery. The lag between the original gure and smoothed gure is half of the window size. The larger window size means smoother result, but also means larger lag. The larger lag will bring great change of SoC. Consequently, it will bring big battery energy consumption. The lifetime of a battery is determined by the cumulative energy used. Therefore, larger window size means shorter lifetime of battery. Therefore, choosing an appropriate window size is a key issue for the smoothing algorithm Window size needs to be selected depending on current weather conditions. If a day is sunny, without any cloud cover, it may not be necessary to use the battery smoothing system at all. However, for a cloudy day, the window size should be selected based on the severity of cloud cover. The relationship between the window size and smoothness improvement needs to be explored further. Weather forecasts can be used to adjust window size based on weather conditions and current energy priorities. This will be part of our future research. VI. SUMMARY A description of a smoothing algorithm is presented, along with a description of the detailed analysis of the parameters. Modeling results are presented showing smoothing of the PV power output. Future work encompasses a complete combination of smoothing and load shifting with battery as well as comparing these results with the actual test results from the site. R EFERENCES
[1] EPRI smart grid demonstration initiative - 3-year update, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Tech. Rep., Jul. 2011. [2] O. Lavrova, F. Cheng, S. Abdollahy, H. Barsun, A. Mammoli, D. Dreisigmayer, S. Willard, B. Arellano, and C. van Zeyl, Analysis of battery storage utilization for load shifting and peak smoothing on a distribution feeder in new mexico, in Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (ISGT), 2012 IEEE PES, Jan. 2012, pp. 1 6. [3] T. Hund, S. Gonzalez, and K. Barrett, Grid-Tied PV system energy smoothing, in Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2010 35th IEEE, Jun. 2010, pp. 002 762 002 766. [4] L. Guo, Y. Zhang, and C. S. Wang, A new battery energy storage system control method based on SOC and variable lter time constant, in Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (ISGT), 2012 IEEE PES, Jan. 2012, pp. 1 7.

Fig. 7.

The comparison of smoothing results

Fig. 8.

The variation of smoothed PV output

since it underplays a lot of rapid transitions. If the subset includes a lot of outlying points, the amount of rapid changes that is not representative for the trend will be taken into account with the other good data. But moving median tracks the median for a time series of results, and the rapid changes are ignored by it. It is more robust in respect to the variations brought by the clouds. For these two algorithms, the charging and discharging rate, ramping rate are in same range. The two differences among these three algorithms are smoothness and SoC. The dual moving average algorithm can get the smoothest result since it uses the average algorithm twice. The moving median algorithm is the most robust since it ignores the rapid changes. In order to measure the smoothness, we use the variation of two consecutive points in smoothed output. From gure 8, we can see that the dual smoothing average algorithm has the lowest variation. Considering it has same SoC with other two algorithms, it is the best algorithm among these three algorithms.

Feng Cheng was born in Shanxi, China. She graduated from Beijing Jiaotong University in 2007 with the major of power system and automation. Now she is pursuing her PH.D in electrical and computer engineering in UNM. Her research interests are in the area of smart grid and renewable energy.

Steve Willard P.E. currently serves as the Principal Investigator for PNMs Smart Grid Storage Demonstration Project with the Department of Energy. He has more than 25 years experience in the energy industry in regulated and unregulated markets, including product development and support, energy system engineering and analysis as well as energy industry market research. Previous positions include Manager of the Center for Innovation and Technology at PNM, Product Support Manager for Honeywell Power Systems, Lecturer in the US Peace Corps and Computer Applications Engineer at Bridgers and Paxton Consulting Engineers Inc. Steve holds 2 US Patents, BSME and MBA degrees, both from the University of New Mexico, and is a licensed engineer in the State of New Mexico.

Andrea Mammoli was born in Ancona, Italy on April 18, 1968. He graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering in 1991, and with a Ph.D. in 1995, from the Department of Mechanical & Materials Engineering at the University of Western Australia. was a Director Funded Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1995 to 1997. He subsequently joined the University of New Mexico as a research faculty member, and is now Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering, and co-Director of the Center for Emerging Energy Technologies. His current research deals with the integration of building-scale energy systems with the electricity grid, particularly as applied to energy storage and distributed systems management. Mammoli is Regents Lecturer and Halliburton Professor at the University of New Mexico. His projects received several awards, including the Association of Energy Engineers Region 4 Renewable Energy Project of the Year in 2009 and the GridWise Architecture Councils GridWise Applied Award in 2008.

Jonathan Hawkins is the Manager of Advanced Technology and Strategy at PNM Resources, an energy holding company based in Albuquerque New Mexico. Jonathans team is responsible providing research and development of new technologies and the proposal of possible business applications of emerging technologies in support of PNM Resources strategic objectives. Areas of responsibility include smart grid technologies and strategy, integration of distributed energy resources; plug in hybrid electric vehicles, and storage technologies. Jonathan Hawkins received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of New Mexico in 1994. After graduation, he went to work for Sumitomo Sitix Silicon, Inc. as an engineer responsible for semiconductor pre and post production material characterization. Jonathan joined PNM Resources in 2002 where he managed PNMs Distribution Standards organization, which provides material specications and model standards for design and construction of utility infrastructure. In 2010 he became the Manager of the Advanced Technology group. Jonathan currently sits on the Electric Power Research Institutes (EPRI) Research Advisory Committee as well as research program advisor roles for EPRI; the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP) as PNMRs voting member and member of the Distributed Renewable, Generators, and Storage Domain Expert Working Group; and is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Brian Arrelano was born in Farmington, New Mexico, on August22, 1974. He graduated from the University of New Mexico in 2006 with a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering. His employment experience includes Geographic Information Systems Technical Supervisor with Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM), Distribution Engineer with PNM, Santa Fe Division in Northern New Mexico, and continuing as an Advanced Technology Project Manager with PNM Resources. His special elds of interest include smart grid technology in the utility industry along with process improvements using Lean and Six Sigma Methodology. He is currently working on an Energy Storage Research and Development Project supported by the DOE. Project partners of this project include the University of New Mexico, as well as Sandia National Laboratories providing support for data modeling and analysis.

This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specic commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof

Olga Lavrova was born in St.Petersburg, Russia in 1974. She received her B.Sc degree in Physics and M.Sc. degree in EE from the St.Petersburg State Electrical Engineering University, and her Ph.D. degree from UCSB in 2001. Her employment experience includes post-doctorate research at UCSB, as well as working in the areas of optoelectronic devices at two start-up companies and a major corporation (Emcore Corp). She joined University of New Mexico in 2007 as a Research Professor, and is now Assistant Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Her current work and areas of interest include photovoltaics and nano-scale semiconductor structures for photovoltaic applications, Smart Grids and emerging energy generation, distribution and storage technologies.