A novel power smoothing index for dispatching of battery energy storage plant in smart microgrid

Solar power plants can lower quality of operation in next generation power systems (smart grids) especially where such entities are interconnected in large scales. Since the solar irradiation level is variable, the output power of photovoltaic (PV) plant is intermittent. Electrical energy storage systems (ESSs) like battery can be exploited to cope with this difficulty. A smart microgrid (MG) consisting of PV, diesel, and battery energy storage (BES) plants is configured for this reason. MG is subject to meet two targets. Firstly, it is able to degrade power fluctuations due to variability in sunlight and load demand. Secondly, it supplies the local load demand according to operator command. A novel application of moving average filtering (MAF) to smooth out PV plant output power waveform is introduced as well. By the use of MAF, a novel power smoothing index (PSI) is presented which variability of load and generation both are considered in its formulation. PSI is embedded in MG power management system (PMS) for the purpose of BES plant dispatching. MG is simulated in PSCAD software. To validate the operational abilities of proposed PSI and MG, several test cases are conducted using actual load and meteorological data in Peninsular Malaysia. The results indicate that PSI can effectively dispatch BES to remove the power fluctuations generated by solar plant and load.