Abstract
Virtual Power Plants (VPP) have been seen as one of the techniques to integrate more decentralized and distributed variable renewable energy systems into the grid. They will thus facilitate the greater democratization of the energy systems. VPP is an aggregation of renewable energy technologies, such as solar PV. It is usually operated with battery energy storage system (BESS) facilities to solve the variability issue of solar PV. However, BESS used as part of VPP has to be appropriately sized to work in the electrical network. While VPP operated with BESS may provide significant technical and financial advantage, most of the BESS sized to be used as VPP in the literature are large scale, operated with large scale VRE’s in the grid. Some of the literatures also provide the use of BESS sizing with Solar PV but for shared residential community use only. The context of BESS sizing for VPP from a residential community is not prevalent in the literature. In this paper, the context of a sizing BESS for VPP from a residential neighbourhood is studied. It is aimed that by optimally sizing BESS for a residential community with rooftop solar PV can supply power to the community and any excess energy may be used for VPP application for the grid. This paper provides a practical process for evaluating the proper size of a centralized BESS in a community with rooftop Solar PV by considering the energy consumption and peak demand profiles of the residential units in three types of communities with rooftop Solar PV, namely low-cost, medium-cost, and high-end community, by considering the mean and maximum energy consumption and peak demand profiles of each residential unit. Such values are used to allocate for the Solar PV system per residential unit and the centralized BESS at mean, 75% of maximum, maximum, and 125% of maximum energy consumption, to be used for the community and for any excess energy to support the electrical networks reliability improvement. The result shows that using the maximum and 125% of maximum energy consumption can provide more than enough energy capacity for VPP application, particularly electrical networks reliability improvement by supplying for the Energy not Supplied (EnS), EN. The result provides that for a High-end community, the stored energy in the BESS can reach up to 24.578 MW h using 125% of maximum sizing at either mean or maximum energy consumption. While for Medium-cost and Low-cost communities, the stored energy can reach up to 17.549 MW h and 14.527 MW h using 125% of maximum sizing at either mean or maximum energy consumption, respectively. Moreover, the result also shows that to alleviate Energy not Supplied (EnS) and contribute to reliability improvement, more residential units are needed if sizing is based on maximum energy consumption, while a lesser number of residential units if the size is based on 125% of the maximum energy consumption.
Published Version
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