Control and size energy storage for managing energy balance of variable generation resources

This paper presents control algorithms and sizing strategies for using energy storage to manage energy balance for variable generation resources. The control objective is to minimize the hourly generation imbalance between the actual and the scheduled generation of the wind farm. Three control algorithms are compared: tracking power imbalance, post-compensation, and pre-compensation. Measurement data from a wind farm located in South-central Washington State are used in the study. The results show that tracking power imbalance yields the best performance by keeping the hourly energy imbalances zero. However, the energy storage system (ESS) will be significantly oversized. Post-compensation reduces power rating of the ESS but the hourly imbalance may not be kept as zero when large and long-lasting energy imbalances occur. A linear regression forecasting algorithm is developed for the pre-compensation algorithm to pre-charge or pre-discharge the ESS based on predicted energy imbalances. The performance comparison shows that the pre-compensation method significantly reduces the size of the ESS while maintaining satisfactory performance.