Energy storage PV capacity firming with forecasted power reference and optimal error minimization

As the energy storage systems (ESS) are highly utilized in the micro-grids where renewable energy resources are interconnected with ESS in the distribution level, PV/wind power capacity firming application becomes very important issue to be achieved as it will further allow the renewable energy resources to be one hour dispatchable electric power resource. This paper proposes a PV power capacity firming algorithm using least squares minimization (LSM) technique taking into consideration of PV power reference and different objective functions. The main purpose of this approach is to try to minimize the error between the targeted smoothed Point of common coupling (PCC) power and the smoothed reference curves. An optimization algorithm using PV historical data for a typical 1 MW PV farm tied with 250 kW/750 kWh battery energy storage systems (BESS) is designed and evaluated. Results show that the proposed methods achieve acceptable firming levels including mostly cloudy days.