1

Abstract The application of a STATCOM and Battery

Energy Storage System (BESS) can help alleviate some of the
problems encountered with wind farm integration to the existing
power system. The intent of this paper is to demonstrate the
benefits obtained with STATCOM and BESS for this purpose.
First, the paper identifies the power quality and some other
issues in the Southern California Edison system where there is
abundant wind generation. Computer simulations (e.g. load flow
and transient stability) show that the application of a STATCOM
with BESS can help the system survive under the most severe
contingencies occurring in the area. The analysis also
demonstrates that the BESS can help dispatch an individual wind
farm in the area during steady state. The BESS can help reduce
local wind generation curtailment, necessary during high
generation and low local system load that causes transmission
overloading, by absorbing the excess energy generated by the
wind farms.

Index TermsSTATCOM, Battery Energy Storage System,
Wind Farm Integration, Wind Power Dispatch.
I. INTRODUCTION
OUTHERN CALIFORNIA EDISON (SCE) is working on
a research project with the support of the California
Energy Commission (CEC) / Public Interest Research and
Development (PIER). The project has multiple objectives and
this paper addresses grid power quality and other issues, and
assesses potential improvements on the grid at selected
interconnection locations by providing energy storage devices
with bidirectional control of real and reactive power.

This paper is based on measurements from a wind power
generation rich area in the Southern California Edison electric
power system and describes the system models and software
tools used during the studies. Section II of this paper includes
a general description of the wind power generation rich area
and a characterization of the key problems in the area. Section
III describes the proposed STATCOM-BESS system and the
benefits obtained from the application of such a system.
Section IV presents the BESS application at one individual
wind farm. Conclusions and next steps in the project are
presented in Section V.
A. General information of the SCE wind generation area
The studies presented in this paper are based on measurements

Juan Castaneda is with Southern California Edison. Sercan Teleke is a
PhD candidate in Dept. of ECE at NCSU. All other authors are with Quanta
Technology, 4020 Westchase Blvd. Suite 300, Raleigh, NC, 27607.
from a wind power generation rich area in the Southern
California Edison electric power system. The total wind farm
and one specific wind farm generation profiles during seven
days are presented in Figure 1. The wind power generation
profiles are based on actual measurements with one sample
per minute from the SCE Energy Management System. As can
be seen from Figure 1 the wind power output has steep rises
and sudden drops during the entire week and during any given
day. During peak generation the system can produce
approximately 270 MW and absorbs about 100 MVAr from
the bulk power system for reactive power support.

(a)

(b)
Figure 1: Total wind farm (a) and one specific wind farm (b) generation
profiles during seven days.
B. System Models and Software Tools
The load flow and stability studies performed are based on
two software tools: PSLF and PSCAD. The PSLF model is a
SCE system wide network database used for bulk power
system analysis. The 2009 year SCE base case is used for the
steady-state contingency analysis and dynamic simulations.
To the base case, the wind generation static and dynamic
characteristics were added. Wind generation was modeled as
Type 1 wind farms, i.e., without any reactive power support
[1]. The results obtained from this base case are representative
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
-50
Time in Days
P

o
u
t
p
u
t

i
n

M
W
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
-10
P

o
u
t
p
u
t

i
n

M
W
Time in Days
Application of STATCOM with Energy Storage
for Wind Farm Integration
Juan Castaneda* Johan Enslin David Elizondo Nagy Abed Sercan Teleke **
S
978-1-4244-6547-7/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE
2
of the operating conditions in the system.

The PSCAD model is essentially a detailed representation of
the wind power generation rich area in the SCE system, but
the rest of the system is represented by an equivalent. The
results obtained from this base case are used to re-confirm the
results obtained in PSLF in which the full SCE system is
represented.
II. CHARACTERIZATION OF PROBLEMS AT SYSTEM UNDER
STUDY AREA
This section includes a general description of the wind power
generation rich area and a characterization of the key
problems.
A. Wind power generation related problems
A summary of the system characteristics and problems in
the area of study include:
380 MW installed wind capacity (310 MW operation)
Minimum reactive power support capability
Absorb around 100 MVAr reactive power from system
No Low-Voltage-Ride-Through (LVRT) capability
Non-compliant with FERC Large Generator
Interconnection Procedure (LGIP)
Common wind farm curtailments
N-1 contingency require > 60 MW wind curtailment
Voltage collapse concern during line trip
Operational problems with installed SVC
Limited reactive power support on system
B. Contingency results without energy storage devices
A contingency analysis on the wind power generation rich
area in the SCE system was performed and identified two
critical contingencies as unsolved cases/non-converging
during steady state load flow simulations. SCE has issued
operational instructions that outline the mitigation techniques
for this contingency by wind energy generation curtailment.

Figure 2 shows the voltage profile and the power output for
two individual wind farms in the area of study and its
performance during one of the critical contingencies. These
results are based on simulations performed in PSCAD
software tool. As can be seen in Figure 2 the voltage
collapses after the contingency and the power output of the
two individual wind farms goes to zero in less than 2 seconds
after the contingency.

(a)

(b)

(c)
Figure 2: Voltage profile (a) and the power output for two individual wind
farms (b) and (c) during one of the critical contingencies (P and Q shown with
dark and light color, respectively).
III. APPLICATION OF STATCOM WITH ENERGY STORAGE
A. Proposed system and STATCOM - BESS modeling
description
The authors of this paper reviewed the existing battery
technologies [2,3,4] and selected the energy storage device,
i.e., the battery and STATCOM size and the specific
substation location within the wind power generation rich area
in the SCE system based on the solution to contingency
problems listed before in Section II. Figure 3 shows the
STATCOM BESS system proposed.



Figure 3: Basic Schematic of the STATCOM BESS
From Figure 3, the main components technical characteristics
are described next.

1. 8 MW/4hr Battery.
Charge/discharge profile for battery operation is weekday-
40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48
60
40
20
0
-20
-40
-60
V
o
l
t
a
g
e


i
n

k
V
Time in seconds
40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48
25
20
15
10
5
0
-5
-10
P

a
n
d

Q

o
u
t
p
u
t

Time in seconds
40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
-2
-4
P

a
n
d

Q

o
u
t
p
u
t

Time in seconds

...
Several
2.5 MVA
34.5kV/480V
30 MVA
66kV/34.5V
BESS
AC/DC STATCOM
8 MW for
4 hours
20 MVAr
Integrated 20 MVAr
STATCOM with 32
MWh BESS

3
only. The battery shall have an operational life of at least 5
years without any major maintenance and charging
/discharging its full nominal capacity. It is also required that
the battery shall last about 20 years at reduced capacity. No
battery technology is preferred and any reliable technology
with good efficiency is satisfactory.

2. 20 MVAr STATCOM.
STATCOM ratings in MVAr are dynamic, or short term
overload ratings, which should last at least 4 seconds. A
hybrid STATCOM with Mechanical Switched Capacitors
(MSC) can also be considered in the final design.

3. Control and HMI (Human Machine Interface) of
STATCOM-BESS system
At the time of the writing, it is acceptable to have the BESS
(with its AC/DC interface) operating independently of the
STATCOM. Efforts to integrate this as one system as well as
addressing potential of conflicting controls among the systems
will be conducted at a later stage in this study.

4. Inverters
One inverter or more inverters can be used to build up the
complete BESS and STATCOM system as long as the ratings
are within the MVA requirements.

5. Substation Selection
The substation selection was based on the following criteria:
a) close proximity to the high capacity wind farms in the area;
b) existence of at least 10 MW of local loads near the selected
substation bus which can be supplied partially by the storage;
c) mitigation of the voltage and angular stability effects of the
critical contingencies;
d) available physical space inside the substation.
B. Contingency results with STATCOM and STATCOM
BESS
This section presents the benefits of the application of
STATCOM-BESS to address the problems at the wind power
generation rich area. Three main benefits of the system
application are:
1) Contingency support in terms of MW and MVAr. The
STATCOM-BESS system prevents the system from
collapsing for the critical contingencies.
2) Voltage profile support. With the STATCOM-BESS system
the voltage recovery is improved in about 10-15%.
3) Improved fault ride-through support on Type 1 wind farms.
The STATCOM-BESS system can support the close-by wind
farms to ride through low voltage excursions following distant
line faults.
4) Some portion of the connected wind farms can be
dispatched an hour ahead.

Dynamic simulations were performed to observe the behavior
of the system during the contingency with and without the
energy storage system. Dynamic simulations in PSLF and
PSCAD software tools were performed.



Dynamic simulation results in PSCAD software
Figure 4 shows the voltage profile and the power output for
two wind farms after the critical contingency. As it can be
seen in the figure, the STATCOM -BESS prevents the voltage
collapse as after 5 seconds from the contingency initiation, the
voltage profile is fairly maintained and the power output of
wind farms remain without significant change. In this case, a
20 MVAr STATCOM and 5 MW battery was simulated. The
graphs are shown only for 5 seconds in order to shown the
transitory response. Other controls like governors act after 10
seconds time frame but are not included in the PSCAD model.





Figure 4: System Collapse Prevention after the application of 20 MVAr
STATCOM and 5 MW battery during the Contingency (P and Q shown with
dark and light color, respectively).
Dynamic simulation results in PSLF software
Two cases are investigated using PSLF: 1) system behavior
without energy storage; and 2) system behavior with energy
storage with reactive capability of 20MVar.

A three phase fault is simulated at time equal to 1 second and
normally cleared after 4 cycles by disconnecting one of the
critical lines. Figure 5 shows the output power and the
terminal voltage behavior of different wind farms in the
system before and after the critical contingency without the
energy storage. Its clear that the system is unstable and within
an undamped oscillatory state.

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49
80
60
40
20
0
-20
-40
-60
-80
V
o
l
t
a
g
e


i
n

k
V
Time in seconds
40 42 44 46 48
25
20
15
10
5
0
-5
-10
-15
P

a
n
d

Q

o
u
t
p
u
t
Time in seconds
40 42 44 46 48
15
12.5
10
7.5
5
2.5
0
-2.5
-5.0
-7.5
P

a
n
d

Q

o
u
t
p
u
t
Time in seconds
4

(a)

(b)
Figure 5: Power output (a) and voltage profile (b) at different wind generation
buses before and after the contingency without the energy storage
Figure 6 shows the system frequency before and after the
critical contingency without the energy storage. The abnormal
frequency excursions are the result of system instability.

Figure 6: The system frequency without the energy storage before and after
the contingency.
Figure 7 shows the system frequency with the energy storage
installed in the system. The figure shows that the system is
stable after the contingency and the oscillations are damped.


Figure 7: The system frequency with the energy storage during the
contingency.
Figure 8 shows the voltage profile and the power output of a
number of wind farms before and after the critical contingency
with energy storage and reactive power support. As we can
see in the figure, the wind farms maintain their pre
contingency power output without any oscillatory behavior.


(a)

(b)
Figure 8: Voltage profile (a) and the wind farms output power (b) before
and after the contingency with energy storage.
IV. BESS APPLICATIONS/OPERATING MODES TO AN
INDIVIDUAL WIND FARM
This section presents a summary of the BESS control
algorithm and the results of its possible applications to an
individual wind farm of about 50 MW peak power. Two
applications are presented: 1) hourly dispatch of real power
output; and 2) contingency support. For the hourly dispatch at
the individual wind farm, the battery contributes to minimize
the wind power variations and controls wind farm power
output within a pre-set value range. For the contingency
support, the battery contributes to absorb energy (8 MW
during four hours maximum) in order to minimize wind farm
curtailments during the time the contingency is on the system.
A. Proposed BESS and control algorithm
The proposed system is a 32 MW-hr battery. The BESS
controls are set so the battery modes of operation are as
follows:
1. Battery regulates, based on hourly dispatch profile, when
the wind farm maximum power output (Pmax) is less than
80%.
2. When wind power output is more than 80%, the battery
discharges at State of Charge (SOC) of 30% in preparation for
a potential contingency. No hourly dispatch is done during the
time Pmax is at 80% or more.
3. If a contingency happens, the battery absorbs energy to
minimize wind farm curtailments and avoid transient
instability during the time following the contingency on the
system.
4. If the contingency is fixed before the battery SOC is at
100% and Pmax is less than 80%, battery goes back to hourly
dispatch.
5. If the contingency is not fixed and the battery gets 100%
SOC, wind curtailments take place.

0 5 10
44
20
0
W
i
n
d

F
a
r
m

P
o
w
e
r

i
n

M
W
Time in seconds
0 5 10
1.2
1.0
0.2
W
i
n
d

F
a
r
m

V
o
l
t
a
g
e

i
n

p
u
Time in seconds
0 5 10
60.4
60
59.2
S
y
s
t
e
m

F
r
e
q
u
e
n
c
y

i
n

H
z

Time in seconds
0 5 1
60.4
60
59.2
Time in seconds
S
y
s
t
e
m

F
r
e
q
u
e
n
c
y

i
n

H
z

0 5 10
1.2
1.0
0.2
W
i
n
d

F
a
r
m

V
o
l
t
a
g
e

i
n

p
u
Time in seconds
0 5 10
44
20
0
W
i
n
d

F
a
r
m

P
o
w
e
r

i
n

M
W
Time in seconds
5
The authors of this paper used proprietary models for the
BESS and the control algorithms for the applications
previously described. These simulations have been performed
in PSCAD software and the simulation results are presented as
a sample of the possible battery operating modes. The wind
profile presented in Figure 1 is used for these results.
B. Hourly dispatch results
The BESS is applied to minimize the winds variability at an
individual wind farm through an hourly dispatch. We assume
that we can forecast the average wind power output for the
next hour with 10% mean absolute error of the individual
wind farm (50-52 MW peak power) [5,6]. For this application,
the BESS will compensate the differences between the hourly
dispatch level, Pset, which comes from the forecast, and the
wind farm power output, Pwind. The power at the battery,
Pbess, then can be expressed as Pbess=Pset-Pwind.

The basic assumptions regarding the battery include AC/DC
converter losses of 3%, the State of Charge (SOC) of the
battery is allowed to change between 30% and 100% and each
battery contributes the same amount of current (uniform SOC
among battery cells). The results of dispatching the wind farm
are shown in Figure 9 (a) for low wind generation and Figure
9 (b) for high wind generation.


(a)

(b)
Figure 9: Dispatching of wind farm power with BESS; Pset: desired set point,
Pwind: wind power, Ptotal: net injected power (Pwind + Pbess, in MW) (a)
During low wind generation (b) During high wind generation
It is seen from Figure 9 (a) that we can dispatch the wind
power with the help of the BESS during low wind generation.
From Figure 9 (b) the BESS can also help to absorb the excess
generation when wind power is high as long as the SOC of the
BESS is within its limits.

C. Contingency Support results
The BESS can also be used to absorb the wind generation
during a contingency so wind curtailment could be avoided.
The BESS performance under a contingency occurring at 24
th

hr is seen in Figure 10. From the figure, it can be seen that
before the contingency the battery SOC is kept low so that it
can be ready to absorb the power if the contingency occurs.
When the contingency occurs at 24
th
hr, the BESS begins to
charge and limit the wind production from 53 MW (before the
contingency) to 45 MW for two and half hours, i.e., until the
BESS is fully charged.

(a)

(b)
Figure 10: Desired Power Output (MW) for BESS application during
contingency (a) Pset: desired set point, Pwind: wind power, Ptotal: net
injected power (in megawatts) (b) State of charge of one battery (normalized
to unity)
The operational modes of the battery to support a 50 MW
hourly dispatch as well as for contingency support have been
presented. The 32 MWh battery is capable of dispatching
about 50 MW of the total capacity of the surrounding wind
farms (270 MW peak power).
V. CONCLUSIONS
This paper has presented the application of STATCOM -
BESS to help alleviate some of the problems encountered with
wind farm integration at SCE power system. The paper has
characterized a number of issues in the Southern California
Edison system where there is abundant wind generation.

The benefits of the application of 8 MW/4 hours Battery
Energy Storage System (BESS) / 20 MVAr STATCOM to
address the problems at a wind power generation rich area
were identified. First, for contingency support in terms of MW
and MVAr; applying the STATCOM-BESS system prevents
96 98 100 102 104 106 108 110 112 114 116 118 120
T
o
t
a
l

P
o
w
e
r

O
u
t
p
u
t

(
M
W
)
22.5
20
17.5
15
12.5
10
7.5
5
2.5
0
-2.5
Time in hours
12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36
T
o
t
a
l

P
o
w
e
r

O
u
t
p
u
t

(
M
W
)
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Time in hours
T
o
t
a
l

P
o
w
e
r

O
u
t
p
u
t

(
M
W
)
60
57.5
55
52.5
50
47.5
45
42.5
40
Time in hours
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
1.1
1.00
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
B
a
t
t
e
r
y

S
O
C
,

N
o
r
m
a
l
i
z
e
d
Time in hours
6
the power system from collapsing for the two critical
contingencies. Second, for voltage profile support; applying
the STATCOM-BESS system results in improved voltage
recovery, about 10-15%. The fault ride-through for close-by
wind farms is improved.

This paper showed that applying an hourly dispatch at an
individual wind farm, the battery contributes to minimizing
the wind power variations and controls wind farm power
output within a pre-set value range. For the contingency
support, the battery contributes to absorb energy (8 MW
during four hours maximum) in order to reduce wind farm
curtailments during a contingency and system conditions of
high generation and low local load that causes transmission
overloading. The operational modes of a 8 MW/4 hours
battery to support hourly dispatch for a 50-52 MW peak power
output wind farm and contingency support has resulted to be
effective.

At the time of this writing, the study team is currently
performing other studies within the SCE system and
investigating potential solutions for the problems at these
locations.
VI. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This paper has been supported in part by funds from the
California Energy Commission.
VII. REFERENCES

[1] CIGRE TF38.01.10, Modeling New Forms of Generation and storage
2001
[2] J. McDowall, Conventional battery technologiesPresent and future,
in Proc. 2000 IEEE Power Engineering Society Summer Meeting, vol. 3,
July 2000, pp. 15381540.
[3] M. A. Casacca, M. R. Capobianco, and Z. M. Salameh, Lead-acid
battery storage configurations for improved available capacity, IEEE
Trans. Energy Conversion, vol. 11, pp. 139145, Mar. 1996.
[4] N.W. Miller, R. S. Zrebiec, R.W. Delmerico, and G. Hunt, Design and
commissioning of a 5 MVA, 2.5 MWh battery energy storage, in Proc.
1996 IEEE Power Engineering Society Transmission and Distribution
Conf., 1996, pp. 339345
[5] M. Ahlstrom, L. Jones, R. Zavadil, W.S Grant, The future of wind
forecasting and utility operations, IEEE Power and Energy Magazine,
pp. 57-64, no.6, Nov.-Dec. 2005.
[6] B. Ernst, Wind Power Forecast for the German and Danish Networks,
Wind Power in Power Systems, T. Ackermann, Ed. John Wiley & Sons,
2005, pp. 365-381.

VIII. BIOGRAPHIES
Juan Castaneda (M 00) earned the Electrical Engineer degree is a Senior
Electrical Engineer in the Grid Advance Department of the T&D Business
Unit at Southern California Edison. He has being at SCE for six years. As a
studies engineer he has conducted electromagnetic transients studies (EMTP-
type computer simulations) for several transmission projects as well as failure
analysis of high voltage equipment. He has also worked in the area of
dynamic protection relay testing using time domain computer simulations.
Juan received his Electrical Engineering Degree from California State
University Long Beach (CSULB) in 1998 and a Master in Electrical
Engineering from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2008. He is
a registered professional engineer in the State of California and a member of
the IEEE and PES societies.
Johan Enslin (M85, SM00) is Vice President of Sustainable department
of Quanta Technology. He is an expert on the interconnection issues of large-
scale, on-shore and offshore wind parks and solar farms to the high and
medium voltage electrical grids. These include feasibility, system impacts,
interconnection options, dynamic modelling, stability, transient, network grid
upgrades, power balancing and harmonic system studies for different on- and
offshore grid topologies using HVDC, HVAC and energy storage
technologies. Previously he also designed, developed and commercialized
back-to-back converters for wind and solar generators.
David Elizondo (S99, M03) is a Senior Advisor for Quanta Technology,
Raleigh, NC . Dr. Elizondo has a broad range of experience in electric power
transmission and distribution which includes: extensive experience in power
system analysis and simulations such as load flow, short circuit, transient
angular stability, contingency analysis, transient voltage stability, and reactive
power compensation. Dr. Elizondo has recent experience with the integration
of renewable energy into the electric power system and has extensive utility-
based project experience with key analysis tools such as PSS/E, PSLF, Power
Factory, Power World and ETMSP.
Nagy Abed (M00) is with Quanta Technology. He received his B.Sc. (The
first Rank on the class) and M.Sc. from Mansoura University, Egypt, and his
PhD from Florida International university, Miami. His research interests
include power system modeling, fault diagnosis, power quality, FACTS
devices, Application of Finite Element in power system and real time control
with HIL. He published more than 43 articles and technical papers in refereed
Journals and Conference Proceedings. He is a member of IEEE and reviewer
for IEEE transactions and conferences. Nagy Abed can be contacted at:
nyabed@ieee.org; nabed@quanta-technology.com

Sercan Teleke (S08) was born in Ankara, Turkey, in 1983. He received the
B.S. degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Middle East
Technical University, Ankara, in 2005 and the M.S. degree in electric power
engineering from Chalmers University of Technology, Goteborg, Sweden, in
2006. He is currently pursuing Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering at North
Carolina State University, Raleigh. His research interests are in the areas of
power electronics applications to power systems, and integration of renewable
energy sources using energy storage.