Analytical approach to estimate distribution circuit's energy storage accommodation capacity

In the past few years, the integration of energy storage (ES) systems into power distribution networks has rapidly increased. Before deploying ES systems, it is imperative to estimate the largest ES capacity a given circuit can accommodate without resulting in any undesirable impacts on system operations. The obtained ES size is called circuit's ES accommodation capacity. Since calculating ES accommodation capacity requires evaluating a large number of scenarios for multiple grid integration issues, simple analytical methods are called for. This paper develops circuit analysis based analytical methods to determine distribution system's ES accommodation capacities. The results obtained using the proposed approach are validated against those obtained using detailed three-phase distribution system simulations. We conclude that the proposed method accurately estimates ES accommodation limits. Moreover, since the approach is based on analytical calculations, it is easily scalable to larger distribution systems.