Comparison of Energy Storage System Technologies and Configurations in a Wind Farm

Wind power fluctuations have adverse impacts on power quality, such as local voltage and system frequency. Integrating an energy storage system (ESS) in a wind farm reduces wind power fluctuations. Various ESS technologies and configurations are viable for this application. This paper examines aggregated and distributed connection topologies of the ESS technologies within the wind farm. The power ratings of the ESSs and their power electronic interfaces are estimated. The abilities of the aggregated and distributed ESSs to improve local voltage and reduce system frequency deviations are evaluated and compared. Simulation results show that the two ESS configurations have effective and similar performance to suppress wind power fluctuations, and thus to improve the power quality. Compared to its distributed counterpart, the aggregated ESS could have a lower power rating due to smoothing effect in a wind farm, but a higher converter VA rating due to the switch count.