Battery Storage System Planning in an Academic Campus Distribution Network

Energy storage such as Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) is used in electrical power networks to improve the flexibility in its operation. They can store energy during one time instance and discharge when required. With ongoing research, BESS is expected to have reduced cost and higher energy density, making it a promising storage option in future. BESS need to be of proper size and located at appropriate place so that the network operation cost is minimal and all operational constraints are satisfied. In this work, optimal location and size of lead acid and lithium ion BESS is determined for the academic campus distribution network of Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur using Genetic Algorithm with embedded module for optimal power flow. The main objective of this work is to mathematically formulate optimization function to minimize the investment and operation-maintenance cost of BESS as well as the net operation cost of the system. This is followed by the analysis to verify the performance with and without BESS in the network. The simulation results show that lithium ion BESS is economically effective in reducing the overall operation cost of the network by reducing energy and demand charges.