Power ancillary services promote energy storage

Why are ancillary services important?

Ancillary services are particularly important in systems with large amounts of variable renewable energy generation, as system operators must be able to respond to unexpected changes in energy supply. They are currently predominantly provided by conventional generators.

How can ancillary services improve energy supply and demand?

Ancillary services provided by cost-effective and system-appropriate energy storage projects help improve energy supply and demand by aligning supply and demand in the power system. This results in reduced curtailment of renewable energy resources and decreased spinning reserve requirements from conventional resources.

What ancillary services are available for energy storage?

Energy storage, most notably batteries, can provide fast-response ancillary services by rapidly and accurately changing their charging and discharging rates in response to external signals.

Do large-scale power plants provide ancillary services?

Large-scale power plants are traditionally used to provide ancillary services to maintain stable operation of the distribution networks Islam et al.  (2017b); Prakash et al.  (2020); Islam et al.  (2017a). However, the recent increase in renewable energy sources (RESs) has affected the operational schemes of the power grids.

What are the applications of energy storage?

As a flexible power source, energy storage has many potential applications in renewable energy generation grid integration, power transmission and distribution, distributed generation, micro grid and ancillary services such as frequency regulation, etc.

What are long-term ancillary services?

The long-term ancillary services are reviewed for peak shaving, congestion relief, and power smoothing. Reviewing short-term ancillary services provides renewable energy operators and researchers with a vast range of recent BESS-based methodologies for fast response services to distribution grids.