Power management solutions for energy management, power quality and environment using battery energy storage systems

Summary form only as given. The emergency of new breeds of power electronics and improved battery technology has created renewed interests in battery energy storage system (BESS). BESS is a modern cost-effective solution that can help both electric utilities and industrial and commercial businesses to meet the growing need of controlling peak energy usage, power quality and environmental problems. BESS provide electric utilities with alternatives to conventional storage technologies, such as pumped hydro. As a generation resource, a BESS can store off-peak energy and provide power when it is needed. As a distribution resource, a BESS can defer or possibly eliminate the need for new transmission or distribution lines, resulting in cost savings and greater asset utilisation. The incorporation of battery storage with renewable energy generators will provide greater grid stability and reliability, thus allowing increased use of these resources. In industrial and commercial applications, BESS is a controllable demand-side management option that can provide industrial manufacturing companies and commercial customers improved power quality, uninterruptible power, and energy management capability. This capability provides for power demand reduction and peak-saving by storing lower cost energy at night and using it during peak hours of the day when energy costs typically are much higher, while simultaneously protecting most economically critical and sensitive of customer loads by providing uninterruptible power supply and active harmonic filtering. This paper describes the current state-of-the-art BESS, including a brief description of the most recently commissioned 20 MW BESS in Puerto Rico. The paper also discusses the future potential of battery energy systems utilising electrical vehicle batteries, and research work at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in developing advanced energy storage systems.