It is common for distribution network operators to impose restrictions on photovoltaic (PV) plant delivery power when the nominal power of the plant is greater than the maximum allowed. Although several studies on battery energy storage systems (BESS) with PV plants have been extensively studied in the existing literature, no research provides a design tool that determines the capability to install properly. The designer addressing such a design is thus faced with the uncertainty of determining which criteria should follow, the maximum surplus, the annual average or the minimum. To recover surplus energy, this paper provides the optimum design tool that determines the BESS capability to integrate into any PV plant. To do so, it provides the algorithms to obtain the capacity value of the BESS from the estimated production without any delivery limitation. This capability combines the maximum energy recovered, which would otherwise be lost, via the best possible use of the BESS. The design procedure provided here is applied to a simulated plant with delivery limitation, obtaining the optimal capacity properly and providing the expected results. The proposed method could be extrapolated to any PV plant, regardless of power, site or applied limitation, then it is highly versatile.

Authors: Antonio Colmenar-Santos, Mario Monteagudo-Mencucci, Enrique Rosales Asensio, África López-Rey

Published in: World Congress on Sustainable Technologies (WCST-2017)

• Date of Conference: 11-14 December 2017
• DOI: 10.20533/WCST.2017.0018
• ISBN: 978-1-908320-78-0
• Conference Location: University of Cambridge, UK