Increasing Power Pystem Flexibility to Integrate High Share of Renewable Energy

The variability and intermittency of renewable energy brings about technical challenges for its integration. In order to integrate high share of renewable energy, more flexibility is needed in the power system. Among all the flexibility options, taking customer-sited energy storage systems as demand response could be a promising measure addressing both grid needs and customer needs. In order to analyse the effect of customer-sited energy storage systems on renewable energy integration, an integrated power generation and customer-sited energy storage systems expansion planning model is proposed in this paper. The expansion and operation of energy storage systems are based on the objective of reducing total power generation costs. Sichuan province in China is taken as a case study due to its abundant renewable energy resources and increasing renewable energy share in the power system. The results indicate that: 1) demand response provided by customer-sited energy storage could partially replace coal power plants to provide flexibility for integrating high share of renewable energy into power system; 2) The utilization scale of renewable energy could be increased and CO2 emissions could be reduced significantly. In order to encourage the deployment of customer-sited energy storage systems, more policy support for energy storage technology and electricity market mechanism improvement are needed to enhance the development of customer-sited energy storage systems.