Battery energy storage solutions for premium power

Most electric utility power quality problems are caused by sags, surges, and momentary outages which last from several cycles to several seconds. Modern loads are very sensitive to these short duration glitches resulting in major losses in revenue through system downtime and loss of product from work in process. Many of these problems are caused by normal transients as equipment and factories go online or shut down. Others are caused by lightning strikes and faults on the distribution system. Although power utility companies attempt to minimize the interruptions through filtering and system management, power quality problems continue to cost American industry billions of dollars a year. Batteries have been used for many years in uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) to protect critical loads. However, because many new facilities have a network of broadly distributed critical loads, a UPS in the order of one to several megawatts is needed to support the total plant rather than several small kilowatt installations. This paper reports on the implementation of such a utility scale power quality management system.