Penetration Rate and Effectiveness Studies of Aggregated BESS for Frequency Regulation

With the increased environmental concern, the photovoltaic (PV) generation capacity is growing in today's power systems. As the PV penetration rate increases, the intermittency and uncertainty of PV systems will cause frequency regulation issues. When rapid fluctuations take place, the system requires fast responding regulation to recover the frequency within a short period of time. Traditional power plants with slow dynamics are less capable of tracking the fast-changing regulation signal. In this context, a battery energy storage system (BESS) is considered as an effective regulation source to respond immediately to frequency deviations. This paper addresses the sizing issue of an aggregated BESS by a series of system level performance tests with different BESS penetration rates. The evaluation criteria are the control performance standards 1 and 2. Response effectiveness of the BESS with different levels of disturbances is also analyzed, with comparison to that of the traditional power plants. The proposed BESS aggregation controller is also validated using software simulations and a hardware testbed.