PNNL

Abstract

Abstract—The variability and non-dispatchable nature of wind and solar energy production presents substantial challenges for maintaining system balance. Depending on the economic considerations, energy storage can be a viable solution to balance energy production with consumption. This paper proposes to use discrete Fourier transform to decompose the required balancing power into different time-varying periodic components, i.e., intra-week, intra-day, intra-hour, and real-time. Each component can be used to quantify the maximum energy storage requirement for different types of energy storage. This requirement is the physical limit that could be theoretically accommodated by a power system. The actual energy storage capacity can be further quantified within this limit by the cost-benefit analysis (future work). The proposed approach has been successfully used in a study conducted for the 2030 Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) system model. Some results of this study are provided in this paper.