Power flow congestion relief by using customer-side energy storage systems

In recent years, energy storage systems have increasingly been expected as a means of load leveling of the annual load factor. Of course there is an effect of installing the energy storage systems at the substation. But some customers operate their storage system in an integrated way and it also has an effect of increasing the load factor. In this paper the authors proposed that the energy storage systems on the customer side be used for congestion relief on transmission networks. However, it is not clear which kind of customer has the effect of relieving transmission line congestion. First, this paper assumes the authors determine the optimal configuration of energy equipment including energy storage systems. We propose a new contract whereby electric utility subsidizes a part of the entrance cost of the energy storage systems and customers change the output pattern of energy storage according to the request of the electric utility. This paper evaluates the possibility that the contract gives merit to both the electric utility and the customer. (C) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.