(373e) A Computation Methodology for Energy Storage System Capacity Under Uncertainty

Energy systems play an important role in the process system operation and management. The energy systems are under severe challenges due to the ever increasing pressure to lower the energy cost under the strengthened environmental regulations and varying fuel prices. An Energy Storage System (ESS) is recently drawing an increasing attention as an efficient and affordable tool in the energy system. It is still very expensive to purchase and install ESS in practice. The capacity of ESS should not be just large enough because it becomes a financial burden to install too much large ESS with low utilization. On the other hand, it should not be just too small to make any meaningful impact of saving energy in the involving energy system. Then it becomes financially important issue to compute the suitable capacity of ESS and its potential expansion planning over multiple time periods. A systematic methodology to compute the capacity should be developed. Particularly the variation in the supply and demand should be simultaneously considered. The potential financial impact on the energy system should be fully considered by evaluating the capacity of ESS to prevent under or over investment. This paper proposes a simulation based methodology to reflect multiple scenarios in the energy system. The proposed methodology allows the decision-makers in the energy system to evaluate the advantages. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the applicability of the proposed methodology with some remarks.