Locating, Sizing, and Optimal Planning of the Distribution Substations Using Vanadium Flow Battery Storage to Improve the Efficiency of the Power Distribution Network

In power grids, there must always be a balance between energy production and consumption. Due to the variable nature of consumers, energy production should also be subject to these changes. Electricity storage is one of the most important issues in the electricity industry, which can generate many ancillary services such as load curve leveling, peak shaving, integration with renewable units, rotating reservations, etc. This paper presents a new and practical method for locating, sizing, and optimally planning vanadium current storage batteries in the above distribution substations. In this innovative method, using load forecasting, the amount of peak consumption per day is calculated, and based on it, several indicators are defined to prioritize the storage installation location. Then, according to the power consumption information in the selected substation, the optimal storage capacity for leveling the load curve is determined, and finally, optimal planning for charging and discharging the storage is presented. In this paper, for simulation of real consumption data of the above distribution network of Semnan city has been used.