Value Stacking of a Customer-Sited BESS for Distribution Grid Support: A Utility Case

This article proposes a value stacking strategy for a utility-owned, customer-sited battery energy storage system for distribution grid support. The proposed strategy includes three steps: application identification, performance evaluation, and battery system planning. Outage mitigation, non-wires-alternative solution, and voltage support are identified as the primary, secondary, and tertiary applications for the proposed storage system. Reliability performance and economic benefit are calculated and compared for each application in five locations in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Planning results including placement, sizing and scheduling of the battery system are presented with real utility experience and constraints. This work contributes to providing a general and ready-to-use planning methodology for distribution system planners to deploy battery storage systems within service territories, strengthen system reliability performance, and achieve sustainability goals.