Integration and Operation of Utility-Scale Battery Energy Storage Systems: the EPFL's Experience

The experimental integration and control of an utility-scale 720kVA/500kWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in the medium voltage network of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL) to achieve dispatched-by-design operation of a heterogeneous group of prosumers is discussed. The motivation for such an objective is twofold: i), dispatching the operation of prosumers reduces the uncertainty associated with their operation, thus the amount of regulating power required to operate power systems, a key issue when considering large-scale integration of renewable energy; ii), the dispatch plan is built in order to satisfy a given design objective for the local network, such as congestion management, load levelling or economic optimization of the prosumers operation according to the electricity price. The proposed framework relies on a minimally invasive monitoring infrastructure, trying to maximize the effort on the use of data analytics to identify prediction models of the consumer behavior and BESS voltage dynamics for an efficient control policy.