Power system reliability impact of energy storage integration with intelligent operation strategy

Electric power industry is experiencing a movement from the existing conventional electric grid to a more reliable, efficient and secure smart grid. In order to achieve these goals, components such as energy storage will be included, and potentially in large scale. Many feasible applications of energy storage in power systems have been investigated. The major benefits of energy storage include electric energy time-shift, frequency regulation and transmission congestion relief. In this paper, we focus on the reliability improvement of the bulk power system brought by the utilization of energy storage in the local distribution systems integrated with renewable energy generation. An intelligent operation strategy for energy storage which improves reliability considering the renewable energy integration is presented. The smart grid communication and control network is utilized to implement the proposed energy storage operation. A bulk power system reliability evaluation framework is proposed to study the reliability impact brought by the energy storage integration and operation. A detailed case study and sensitivity analysis is performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented operation strategy and evaluation framework, and to provide valuable insights on the power system reliability impact derived from the energy storage integration.