BATTERY STORAGE PLANT WITHIN LARGE LOAD CENTERS

Financial and environmental constraints have been instrumental in reducing the levels of power system reliability and security. Consequently bulk power system are now more vulnerable to severe system disturbances and these, more frequently, have caused collapses. The main cost of these incidents to the community has been the extensive loss of supply to large urban centres. With the retirement of power stations within or near these urban centres, not only are these localities more vulnerable but if a blackout does occur, it takes longer to restore supplies. As a long term strategy, the installation of numbers of Battery Storage Plant (BSP) in urban centres would significantly raise power system levels of reliability and security. There are three important advantages of BSP: (i) no environmental difficulties to placing them within urban areas, (ii) there is an instantly accessible output of MW and MVAr, (iii) commercial consumers requiring a higher reliability will meet much of the capital cost. Utilities would need to offer tariff incentives to gain an operational control of the BSP. The ability for extremely fast output changes of MW and MVAr outputs, coupled with their energy storage, would make BSP useful for normal and emergency operation as well as speeding up system restoration. Their potential economic and operational advantages point to an increasing utilisation of BSP by electric utilities in the future development of power systems.