Dispatching of wind farms using battery energy storage

In this paper, a STATCOM interfaced battery energy storage system (BESS) is considered for smoothing intermittent power output of a large wind farm so that it can be dispatched. The main advantage of the system is that it can inject both real power (by charging/discharging the BESS) and the reactive power to the system. The paper investigates the main design issues related to BESS – the control method for BESS, BESS size and its performance requirements. Simulations based on an actual wind farm data show that the output of the wind farm can be smoothed with BESS to facilitate dispatching of the wind farm.

Keywords: wind power, STATCOM, battery energy storage system, BESS, control, wind energy, power smoothing