In off-grid wind power plants, the uncertainty of net load becomes the main factor that controls the operation and planning of these plants. The term net load refers to system demand minus the generation from variable renewable resources. Energy storage system is a key solution for system operators to provide the required flexibility needed to balance the net load uncertainty. This study proposes a probabilistic approach for sizing a battery storage system (BSS) with the aim of mitigating the net load uncertainty associated with the off-grid wind power plant. A novel battery-sizing index that takes into account the probabilistic nature of the wind resources and the electric load is developed. The proposed sizing approach aims to quantify the required BSS capacity for operating the wind plant without incurring excessive battery installation cost as well as for reducing the mismatch between the wind generation and the electric load. An 8.5 MW utility-scale wind farm is used as a test system to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
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