Technical Considerations for Designing Battery Energy Storage Inverter as a Fully Functional Black Starting Resource

A black-start resource is a generation asset that can start without support from the grid. Typically, the transient performance of conventional standby emergency generators is well understood. The sub-transient and transient capacity of the rotating generators allowed these systems to energize the transformers and start the motors without major issues. However, this is changing rapidly since an increased number of facilities are either replacing the conventional standby emergency generators or adding inverter-based resources (IBRs) such as photovoltaic (PV) and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS). When gridforming BESS is the black starting resource for a customerowned power system served by a utility, it is critical to understand the in-rush power requirements from loads to operate within the capability of inverters. Successful black starting of local islands necessitates the development of inrush current profiles and load sequencing. In this paper, we will provide a proposed method based on several steps involved in evaluating the size of a BESS against the in-rush current and power demand requirements-of the microgrid in island mode. The focus of this paper is to simplify this process by breaking it down into sequential steps and enabling the engineers with sizing of Battery Energy Storage Inverter and the technical considerations for designing Battery Energy Storage Inverter as a fully functional black-starting resource.