An Analysis of the Energy Storage for Improving the Reliability of Distribution Networks

The energy storage systems have been frequently used to facilitate the integration of variable, renewable energy to distribution power networks. The improvement of the reliability of supply is another possible benefit of storage integration. However, energy storage technologies represent a costly solution that require optimisation based methods and detailed analyses to determine their size and parameters. This paper analyses the contribution of energy storage to reliability when factors like storage capacity, rated power, initial state of charge (SOC) and penetration level of renewable Distributed Generation (DG) are all evaluated. In order to perform the analysis, a specific procedure for the storage evaluation is proposed. The results of a case study will be provided as well as an example showing the impact of the analysed parameters on the energy storage sizing.