Congestion relief using grid scale batteries

Sustained load growth in electric power industry has resulted in intensive usage of grid assets including transmission system. Over the years, the transmission infrastructure is unable to evolve at the same proportionate which leads to diminishing reserve capacity in a transmission system. This leads to frequent congestions in the grid. Therefore, congestion management has become vital to maintain the required level of reliability of the supply of power. In contemporary literature, congestion is usually managed by generation rescheduling and/or load shedding. This incurs huge additional costs as generation/distribution companies need to provide huge incentives for changing their pre-committed schedules. In order to minimize the congestion relief cost, this paper proposes a cost efficient congestion management scheme using distributed battery energy storages (BESs) with minimum adjustment to the pre-committed schedules of loads and generators. Simulation results on a 30-bus IEEE benchmark system has validated the potential of BES for congestion management in electric grids.