IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 4, NO.

2, APRIL 2013 491

Development of a Markov-Chain-Based Energy

Storage Model for Power Supply Availability
Assessment of Photovoltaic Generation Plants
Junseok Song, Student Member, IEEE, Vaidyanathan Krishnamurthy, Student Member, IEEE,
Alexis Kwasinski, Member, IEEE, and Ratnesh Sharma, Member, IEEE

Abstract—A new Markov-chain-based energy storage model Load served by the PV-energy storage
to evaluate power supply availability of photovoltaic generation system.
is proposed. Since photovoltaic resources have high output vari-
ability subject to weather conditions, energy storage can be added Amount of energy per unit time
in order to increase the availability of photovoltaic generation. interchanged between two adjacent
Although adding energy storage is a promising strategy to im- energy states.
prove the availability of photovoltaic generation, energy storage
sizing to meet a certain availability must be taken into account Energy difference between two adjacent
in order to avoid over-sizing or under-sizing capacity, which are energy states.
two undesirable conditions leading to increased system cost or Number of states in energy storage
inadequate availability, respectively. This paper proposes a new
Markov-chain-based energy storage model to develop a power system.
supply availability framework for photovoltaic generation. The Maximum number of possible transitions
proposed work models energy states in a photovoltaic-energy from each state.
storage system in order to understand the nature of charge/dis-
charge rates for energy storage that affect the system’s power Battery capacity.
output. This developed Markov chain model may assist when Time step of the Markov chain.
planning both large and small-scale grid integrated photovoltaic
generation because energy state’s behavior of the photovoltaic-en- Probability that a transfer of units of
ergy storage model can be used for forecasting expected power energy occurs to the battery.
output. In addition, an example using lithium–ion batteries is
Expected energy transferred to the energy
given in order to explore the effects on availability of energy
storage capacity degradation. storage device per unit time.
Index Terms—Availability, distributed power generation, energy Energy transferred to the energy storage
storage, Markov chain, power generation dispatch, power gener- device at time .
ation planning, photovoltaic (PV) systems, PV power generation, One-step transition probability matrix for
smart grids.
the energy storage system.
Limiting distribution of the Markov
NOMENCLATURE chain energy storage model.
Probability of having no energy in the
energy storage.
The set of all PV sources. Exponential distribution parameter for
insolation statistics.
Power delivered by the th source.
Rayleigh distribution parameter for load
Total power delivered by the PV sources.
statistics during daytime.
Availability of the PV-energy storage
Rayleigh distribution parameter for load
system.
statistics during nighttime.
Power flow from PV modules to the
Manuscript received May 20, 2011; revised May 04, 2012; accepted June 24, energy storage system.
2012. Date of publication September 10, 2012; date of current version March
18, 2013. This work was supported by NEC Laboratories America, INC. Power flow from PV modules to the
J. Song, V. Krishnamurthy, and A. Kwasinski are with the Department of energy storage system taking into account
Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, TX
78712 USA (e-mail: tedsong@mail.utexas.edu; vkrishnamurthy@mail.utexas. the effect of the load at night.
edu; akwasins@mail.utexas.edu). Power flow from PV modules to the
R. Sharma is with the Department of Energy Management, NEC Laboratories
America, INC., Cupertino, CA 95014 USA (e-mail: ratnesh@sv.nec-labs.com). energy storage system considering its
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online charging and discharging efficiency.
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSTE.2012.2207135
Power generated by PV modules.

1949-3029/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

492
Power from grid.
Power demand from load.
Power demand from load during daytime.
Power demand from load during
nighttime.
Charging efficiency of energy storage
system.
Discharging efficiency of energy storage
system.
I. INTRODUCTION
P HOTOVOLTAIC (PV) generation resources have high
variability. In addition to their deterministic variable
nature due to day and night cycles, there is a randomly variable
component due to weather conditions, e.g., clouds. In order to
overcome power generation variability, energy storage can then
be used to make the PV generation profile more dispatchable
by increasing its availability [1], [2]. Thus, to achieve a certain
power availability goal, it is essential to quantify and represent
charge and discharge cycles in energy storage devices. The goal
of this paper is to model charge and discharge processes on an
energy storage component in a PV system in order to determine
power output availability. In turn, this information can be used
to properly size the energy storage added to a PV system that
yields a desired power availability level.
In the past, there have been a number of works investigating
energy storage sizing for PV generation plants. In [3]–[6], au-
tonomy is used in order to size battery. In other words, ca-
pacity in number-of-days is used to compensate for the time
when a power resource is not able to power the load demand.
This method is simple; however, the effects of large variations
in weather conditions or the load demands may not be effec-
tively applied to the sizing, which would cause over-sizing or
increased system cost. On the other hand, [7]–[10] use the sum
of time intervals in which the load demands are not met to en-
ergy resources during the total amount of time when the load
demands exist. This strategy may give an estimate of the ex-
pected amount of time that load is not powered, but it does not
give the probability that the energy resources will succeed pow-
ering the load demands. In this paper, a Markov chain energy
storage model [11] is used to model the charge and discharge cy-
cles in order to measure the probability of the PV-energy storage
system to power the load.
The aforementioned combination of PV generation and en-
ergy storage system allows converting PV systems from a pure
power-based instantaneous generation system into an energy-
based dispatchable generation resource. Moreover, from a plan-
ning perspective, the proposed model allows a more effective
energy storage sizing and overall grid asset planning that will
reduce costs by providing an alternative to the conventional ap-
proach of over-sizing energy storage. It may also prevent higher
battery cost due to shorter battery life due to excessive cycling.
Furthermore, the model is completely general and can be ap-
plied from small-scale PV systems, such as for residential ap-
plications, to large-scale PV systems, passing through neigh-
borhood utility scale and micro-grid applications. The model
can also be used both for standalone and for grid connected
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 4, NO. 2, APRIL 2013
systems. For instance, the proposed model can also be used
to size power systems for critical loads—e.g., communication
sites—that need above-average availability due to their vital
societal services not only during normal conditions, but also
during and after extreme events, e.g., natural disasters [12], [13].
This design can be carried out because the model is able to eval-
uate optimal-size for energy storage that allows PV generation
to reach a required availability level.
The paper is organized as follows. Section II introduces the
system model, and Section III shows how proposed model is im-
plemented. Section IV discusses the effects of energy storage
capacity degradation on availabilities, and finally, Section V
concludes the paper.
II. SYSTEM MODEL
Let be the set of PV resources. If is the power supplied
by a PV source , the total power of an array can be found as
(1)
The availability of the system can be defined as the proba-
bility that a local PV generation plant is able to provide enough
power to a load and to charge the energy storage [14]. That is
(2)
where represents the combination of the load and the daytime
charging of the energy storage system for nighttime use and for
potential PV generation deficit during the day.
Availabilities over 0.99999 or 5 nines are typically required
for critical loads, such as conventional communication plants,
whereas the U.S. grid availability is about 3 nines [15]. Since
power generation availability should be greater than the re-
quired load availability, it is evident that when PV modules are
used as the only power generation resources, availability needs
cannot be met without energy storage.
In the past, general calculations for storage sizing using sta-
tionary assumptions on a time series had been conducted based
on PV insolation data. In particular, the sizing scheme used in
[11] relates availability and storage capacity using a Markov
chain model in which the battery state of charge (SOC) is rep-
resented by discrete states. However, this scheme models
the energy stored per unit time to take on only two
values and —where is the energy interchanged, ,
with the storage device per unit time—when and
, respectively. It is worth clarifying that when the unit
time is 1 s, both and have the same numerical value but
their unit of measurement is different. In the related Markov
model [11], and represented here in Fig. 1(a), only transitions
among adjacent states are considered. These transitions involve
an energy exchange per unit time of . In this Markov model,
each state represents the battery SOC; State #1 represents the
fully discharged condition and State # represents the fully
charged condition. By considering only transitions among ad-
jacent states, the Markov chain model in [11] implies that the
random variable is inherently constrained to take only two
values because is assumed to be constant, which is not real-
istic. In order to address this issue, this paper proposes to extend
SONG et al.: DEVELOPMENT OF A MARKOV-CHAIN-BASED ENERGY STORAGE MODEL 493

Then, the equation that describes the charge/discharge process

is

(6)

where is the energy level at time , is the energy level

1 s later, and is the energy transferred to or from the battery
in the 1 s under consideration. That is, equals multiplied
by 1 s—i.e., the assumption is that s.
Consider now the transition probability matrix yielded by the
Markov model in Fig. 1(b) and representing the battery charge
and discharge process

Fig. 1. Markov-chain-based battery state transition diagram.

.. .. .. ..
this methodology to allow to take values within a fi- . . . .
nite set that is not necessarily constrained to just two possible
values and as used in [11].
The newly proposed Markov chain model is shown in
Fig. 1(b). This proposed model allows for many possible state (7)
changes, which is a closer fit to the characteristics of batteries
charge and discharge. In particular, the diagram in Fig. 1(b) where
models the battery state transition with transitions out of
each state at each time step. In the diagram, and (8)
represent the probabilities of staying in States #1 and # in
the next time step, respectively. The transitions among states
are represented by the probabilities , where represents the (9)
energy injected or extracted from the batteries per unit time
with respect to the unit of power . For example, is the tran-
sition to adjacent states involving an energy transferred to the (10)
battery per unit of time equal to , while also represents a
transition to adjacent states but with energy drained out of the
batteries. In addition, the state space of expands as (11)

(3) The size of the matrix in (7) is , where represents

Assuming that the charge and discharge process are linear, the
capacity of the storage can then be defined as
(4)
where is the time involved in the energy exchange because
it is assumed that State #1 is representing the condition when
there is no energy stored in the battery and because it would re-
quire successive transitions into adjacent states
representing a higher SOC in order to reach State # , that rep-
resents the condition of the battery at its maximum SOC condi-
tion, with each transition involving a one-second energy transfer
equal to . That is, the power involved in each of such tran-
sitions equals . The same conclusion can be reached with a
single transition involving an energy exchange that lasts 1 s and
accounts for an energy difference equal to . units of and that the battery is at an SOC in which it is un-
In order to analyze the Markov chain shown in Fig. 1(b) in
more detail, let be the expected energy per unit time trans-
ferred to the battery during time
(5)
the total number of states in which the battery charge/discharge
process is quantized, and represents the transition probabili-
ties shown in Fig. 1(b) that are obtained based on PV generation
and load profile histograms. Equations (8)–(11) are evaluated
using the Markov chain property that states that the sum of any
row is equal to 1. Furthermore, in the steady state, the limiting
probabilities can be found by [16]
(12)
where is the stationary distribution. Limiting probabilities in-
dicates the expected probability of ending at each of the states
in the Markov diagram in Fig. 1(b) as the process settles. Once
the limiting probabilities are known, the loss of load probability
(LOLP) is the probability of having a power deficiency of
able to meet this power deficiency of units of because it
would require a transition in the Markov Chain to the fully dis-
charge state or beyond it. That is, in mathematical terms, LOLP
needs to consider the case of the power deficiency being equal
to when varies from 1 to in order to consider all the
possible mutually exclusive power deficiency events. Since the
494 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 4, NO. 2, APRIL 2013

“OR” clause involving the combined probability of mutually ex-

clusive events translates into a sum of probabilities, then

(13)

where represents the state that has not enough energy to

power the load. Therefore, (13) can be used to determine LOLP
for a certain energy storage capacity. Conversely, by varying the
energy storage capacity it is possible to find the relationship be-
tween LOLP and the energy storage capacity. This information
can be then used to determine the required capacity of energy
storage to achieve a certain availability goal. In addition, the
Markov chain states represent SOC. Since the context in which
the proposed approach is presented is to use this model for plan-
ning, SOC is not actually measured, and such evaluation of SOC
is beyond the scope of this paper. However, this model allows
us to estimate expected time spent in a given SOC by calcu-
lating the expected time in each state corresponding to a Markov
process with the described model as its embedded Markov chain
[14].
An example is given in order to clarify how (13) is used to
determine LOLP. When transition probabilities—which are as-
sumed to be those in (14)—are given for a five-state case, a one- Fig. 2. Block diagram of an availability calculation process.
step transition probability matrix—which is shown in (15)—can
be determined using (7)–(11)
file. A histogram can then be generated using the difference be-
tween the power generated by PV modules and the power con-
(14) sumed by load. The found histogram shows how frequently a
certain amount of energy transfer occurred. With the histogram,
the one-step transition probability matrix can be found by using
transition probabilities as inputs, and limiting probabilities are
calculated. Finally, the availabilities are evaluated with respect
(15) to the various sizes of energy storage, which are used to develop
the relationship between the two indices. The details of the cal-
culations involved in each block in the flowchart using actual
data sets are discussed next.
With (12), limiting probabilities are determined to be
A. Random Values Generation
1) Random values generation for the PV output: The data set
(16)
of PV power generation was obtained in Austin, TX for a period
Then, (13) can be used to find which represents the state of 7 months—from January to July, 7:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M.—at
where the energy from PV-energy storage system does not meet 5-min intervals. As shown in Fig. 3, the maximum power of
the required energy that the load demands incident PV insolation is about 1 kW/m . In order to find the
probability density function of PV incident power, a histogram
is generated. As Fig. 4 shows, the shape of the histogram tends
to follow an exponential distribution of the form
(17) (18)

III. MODEL DEMONSTRATION
In this section, the proposed Markov chain energy storage
model is demonstrated with actual PV insolation and load data
sets. Fig. 2 shows the flowchart of a complete calculation pro-
cedure to determine the relationship between energy storage
capacity and availability. As shown, the calculation procedure
starts by using a Monte Carlo approach to generate the random
values of both daytime PV power and load based on the prob-
ability density functions of incident PV power and load pro-
which, then, can be used to build a data set using the Monte
Carlo method. The exponential distribution parameter was
determined in order to approximate the actual histogram.
Using Matlab, was found to equal 0.0038. Then, the found
probability density function was used to generate random
values using a Monte Carlo approach. In the Monte Carlo
simulation, it is assumed that the incident PV power is mea-
sured every 5 min for a period of ten years, which results
in over 1 million random points (1 051 200 points
5-min/h 8760 h/year 10 years). These random points are
SONG et al.: DEVELOPMENT OF A MARKOV-CHAIN-BASED ENERGY STORAGE MODEL
Fig. 3. Incident PV power collected from 7:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. for 7 months.
Fig. 4. Histogram of incident PV power from Fig. 3.
Fig. 5. Histogram of the generated random values of incident
PV power.
generated using the determined exponential distribution to
conduct the Monte Carlo method. Fig. 5 shows the generated
histogram by the random values of incident PV power. As
shown, the shape of the histogram in Fig. 5 approximates
that of the histogram in Fig. 4. The random values of in-
cident PV power that are generated in this way along with
the documented specifications of PV modules in the market
can be used to estimate the output power of a PV generation
plant. For example, a single 250-W PV panel from [17] has
15.3% efficiency and 1.51-m area. With an assumption that
10 000 panels (total capacity of 2.5 MW) of given model in [17]
are placed flat to generate power, the area of the PV generation
plant is 15.1 km . With the calculation, this PV generation
plant will generate an average power of 608.22 kW (standard
deviation kW) between 7:00 A.M. and 7:00 P.M.
2) Random values generation for the load: A load profile
was also used to calculate in combination with the just calcu-
lated PV power generation profile in order to determine the total
energy transfer per unit time. The load data set was obtained
from [18] for a time period of one year. The load profile, which
is also shown in Fig. 6, demonstrates that the average energy
usage per household in a day is 17.62 kWh.
495
Fig. 6. The average energy usage per household for 1 year.
Fig. 7. Histogram of the incident load (one household) during daytime.
Fig. 8. Histogram of the incident load (one household) during nighttime.
Figs. 7 and 8 show the histograms of the incident load power
during daytime (7:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M.) and nighttime (7:00 P.M.
to 7:00 A.M.), respectively. It can be seen that the incident load
power during daytime is likely to be greater than that during
nighttime. Since the shape of the histograms in Figs. 7 and 8
match well with a Rayleigh distribution—which is shown in
(19)—Matlab was used to find its parameters ( ,
)
(19)
Then, over 1 million random load values were generated—the
same as the number of incident PV power random values—ac-
cording to the found Rayleigh distributions. Figs. 9 and 10 show
the generated histograms of random load values during day and
nighttime, respectively.
B. Power Transfer Calculation
The energy transfer per unit time—denoted here as power
transfer—between the PV modules and the energy storage
system is determined using the generated histograms of
random values of incident PV power and load. With the as-
sumption that there are 300 households as a load—which
has an average power consumption of 238.37 kW (standard
496
Fig. 9. Histogram of the generated random values of inci-
dent load (one household) during daytime.
Fig. 10. Histogram of the generated random values of
incident load (one household) during nighttime.
deviation kW) during daytime and 202.14 kW (stan-
dard deviation kW) during nighttime—connected to
the aforementioned PV generation plant (2.5-MW capacity),
the power transfer then can be found by subtracting the ran-
domly generated load values from randomly generated incident
PV power as shown in the following:
(20)
In order to represent the charge and discharge process for an
entire day (daytime nighttime), the randomly generated load
values in Figs. 9 and 10 were additively combined in order to
create a new load data set—shown in Fig. 11 and (21)—that
represents the load demands in an entire day. With this strategy,
the impact of the discharge processes during nighttime—there
is no charge process during nighttime—can be included in the
model
(21)
Evidently, combining the two separate load data sets yields a
greater load value which will not likely be observed in reality,
but it can be interpreted as a PV generation plant not only gen-
erating power for the load demand during daytime, but also
charging the energy storage in advance for the nighttime use.
Assuming that 1 million values of each data set (PV and load)
are sufficient to simulate the process, Monte Carlo simulation is
then able to provide an estimate of the power transfer distribu-
tion using (21). Fig. 12 shows the histogram of the generated
random values for the power transfer. It can be interpreted that
the estimated maximum power available to charge the energy
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 4, NO. 2, APRIL 2013
Fig. 11. Histogram of the combination of generated random values of incident
load (one household) during day and nighttime.
Fig. 12. Histogram of the generated random values of power transfer between
the 2.5-MW PV power plant and 300-housing load.
storage system is about 2300 kW and the maximum expected
power that would discharge the batteries is about 1000 kW.
In addition, PV-energy storage systems can be used to pro-
vide power to the loads autonomously or as a part of grid inte-
grated system along with multiple power sources. In the case of
an autonomous operation, the presented model can be directly
applied. On the other hand, when a PV-energy storage system is
a part of grid integrated system, excess power may be injected to
the grid if the batteries are fully charged or grid may contribute
to power the load when PV-energy storage system does not have
sufficient power for the demand. Hence, when grid contributes
to supply power, (20) can be modified as
(22)
Particularly, availability needs to be taken into account
in order to accurately analyze the availability of a PV-energy
storage system in the grid integrated system. Moreover, since it
can be considered that infinite power is available from a grid,
(22) is also affected by the choice for a control strategy for
the term denoted by and typically implemented through
power electronics interfaces. Such control strategies may have
different optimization goals—e.g., fast charging or improved
battery life charging—and may be different depending on the
energy storage technology being used—e.g., flooded lead-acid
batteries may require a boost charge to equalize cell voltage.
Analyzing the statistical characteristics of the grid and, even
more importantly, deriving alternative strategies for controlling
is out of the scope of this paper so only the case of an au-
tonomous operation is discussed and presented throughout the
paper. However, the proposed approach can serve as the basis
SONG et al.: DEVELOPMENT OF A MARKOV-CHAIN-BASED ENERGY STORAGE MODEL
for the analysis of such control algorithms in terms of their im-
pact on power supply availability and energy storage usage.
C. Transition Probabilities
The histogram in Fig. 12 is used to find the transition proba-
bilities in (7) since a transition probability can be determined
with the counted number of a power transfer value divided by
the total number of sample points. As an example, if a 1000-kW
power transfer take place times in a total number of
1 million occurred transfers, then the transition probability for
a 1000-kW power transfer can be found by dividing
over 1 million. With this methodology, the one-step transition
probability matrix in (7) can be determined, which equals (23),
shown at the bottom of the page.
The following list shows the assumptions that have been
made for the calculation process of the one-step transition
probability matrix in particular shown above.
• PV generation plant and the set of loads (300 housings)
are located in the same area. Hence, any transmission loss
is not considered.
• and in (4) are 20 kW and 151, respectively.
D. Limiting Probabilities
After the one-step transition probability matrix is found, (12)
is used to determine the limiting probabilities which are shown
as follows:
(24)
As mentioned earlier, the found limiting probabilities show
the probabilities of a state being at each energy level in the
Markov chain model at any given point in time. For example,
—which is 0.3047 as shown in (24)—represents the prob-
ability of a state that would be at the full energy level of energy
storage system.
E. Availability versus Energy Storage Capacity
Equation (13) uses the limiting probabilities and a one-step
transition probability matrix in order to find . Since rep-
resents the probability that energy storage does not have suffi-
cient energy to power the load, availability can then be found by
(25)
As discussed in Section III-D, the limiting probabilities can
be found with the given capacity of energy storage using the
proposed model, which means that the limiting probabilities
would change according to the change of energy storage
.. .. ..
. . . .
497
capacity. Since is determined using the limiting probabili-
ties—as shown in (13)—it can be understood that the change
of energy storage capacity would result a change of . Hence,
when the relationship of and energy storage capacity
is known, the relationship between PV system availability
and energy storage capacity can then be found by varying
the capacity of energy storage. Since the capacity is defined
as , the energy storage system capacity can
be varied by changing the number of states, . Therefore,
when , , and in (4) are assumed to equal 20 kW, 151,
and 1 hour, respectively, the energy storage capacity is 3 MWh
( hour kW). This capacity in MWh can also
be represented in days—by dividing storage capacity (MWh)
by the product of hours-in-a-day and average load—which is
0.28 days [ MWh/(24 hours 440 kW)]. As a result, with
the particular assumptions considered for the calculation of
in (23), (13) and (25) can be used to find the availability which
is 0.9951 or 2.31 nines.
Furthermore, with a number of computer simulations with
various capacity values—implying also changing —the rela-
tionship between availability and energy storage capacity can
also be determined. Fig. 13 shows the curve which represents
how availability and energy storage capacity are related. As
shown, capacity values are determined in number of days.
Capacity in number of days can be converted to capacity in
Wh using the average load value (Capacity [Wh] capacity
[Days] 24 [hours] average load value [W]). For example,
when 300 households use a 2.5-MW PV generation plant
and want to maintain 4 nines of availability, the required
energy storage capacity would be approximately 6.34 MWh
( days 24 hours 440 kW) when the curve in Fig. 13
is used. This result not only shows how much storage capacity
is needed to achieve certain availability, but also demonstrates
how various amounts of energy storage capacities affect avail-
ability.
IV. CASE STUDY APPLICATIONS
A. Applying Storage Capacity Degradation
The aging process, which introduces power and energy ca-
pacity degradation [19], [20], is inevitable for batteries. Hence,
when batteries are used as an energy storage system, a real-
istic assessment of plant availability needs to consider battery
capacity degradation. This section explores how storage ca-
pacity degradation affects availability. Particularly, lithium–ion
(Li–ion) batteries are discussed as an example to show the
relationship between capacity degradation and availability
reduction.
.. (23)
498
Fig. 13. Availability versus storage capacity (2.5-MW PV generation plant and
300-housing load).
Fig. 14. Geographic impact on battery life [22].
In [21], the authors investigated how to estimate battery
degradation using three factors that cause aging: tempera-
ture, open-circuit voltage, and depth of discharge. Hence, the
analysis of the relationship between capacity degradation and
availability can be performed using the estimation methods in
[21] and the Markov chain model presented in this paper.
Let be the relative capacity after capacity degradation oc-
curs by aging. Then, (4) can be modified to represent the de-
graded capacity of energy storage system
(26)
Since is the energy interchanged with the storage device per
unit time, (26) can be interpreted that the energy interchanged
between the Markov chain states is reduced with the same ratio
of the capacity degradation. Hence, when is defined as ,
(26) can be written as
(27)
Equation (27) is then used to demonstrate how battery degrada-
tion affects availability. To simplify the analysis, only capacity
degradation with regard to temperature is considered. Fig. 14
shows simulated results from [22] which represent the capacity
degradation by various operating temperatures. It can be seen
that the ambient temperatures in various locations in the U.S. re-
sult in varying capacity degradation as the batteries are operated
over a period of time. With an assumption that the batteries in
this analysis have the same capacity degradation characteristics
of the batteries in Fig. 14 and the impact of depth of discharge
is negligible, the relationship between availability and capacity
degradation by temperature can be determined.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 4, NO. 2, APRIL 2013
Fig. 15. Availability versus storage capacity (2.5-MW PV generation plant and
300-housing load) in Minneapolis, Houston, and Phoenix: 10 years after the
installation.
According to Fig. 14, ten years of Li–ion battery operation
results in a relative capacity which approximately equals
0.87, 0.81, and 0.77 in Minneapolis, Houston, and Phoenix,
respectively. When is determined for each location, the
impact of capacity degradation by temperature can be shown.
Fig. 15 shows the simulated results using the presented Markov
chain model with applying (27) to the calculation process. As
shown, availabilities in each location are reduced with respect
to the amount of capacity degradation occurred. This result
shows that when relative capacities are known after capacity
degradation with respect to factors including temperature,
open-circuit voltage, and depth of discharge [21], the amount
of reduced availability can be determined using the presented
Markov chain model.
B. Applying Charging and Discharging Efficiencies
For a real physical battery, charging and discharging efficien-
cies affect the amount of power transfer between the PV mod-
ules and load and the batteries. Hence, such efficiencies yield an
effective power transfer defined as
(28)
where and are charging and discharging efficiencies, re-
spectively. Since the battery is charged when there is excess
PV power in addition to the load— is positive—
is the amount of charge power. In a similar manner,
when the battery is discharged— is negative—
is the amount of discharge power. In particular,
shows that the discharge power may be greater than the power
supplied to the load since the discharging efficiency reduces the
actual amount of transferred power. For instance, is 1.25
when is 0.8.; this indicates that the discharge power from the
battery is greater than the power supplied to the load by a factor
of 1.25.
As shown in (28), charging and discharging efficiencies,
and , affect the amount of energy that is charged and dis-
charged. When the charging and discharging efficiencies are less
than 100%—which is the case for a real physical battery—the
actual charged energy to the battery is less than the energy that
is provided to the battery, and the actual discharged energy from
the battery is greater than the energy that load receives. Hence,
SONG et al.: DEVELOPMENT OF A MARKOV-CHAIN-BASED ENERGY STORAGE MODEL
Fig. 16. Histogram of the generated random values of power transfer between
the 2.5-MW PV power plant and 300-housing load.
(20) can be rewritten as follows after charging and discharging
efficiencies are taken into account:
(29)
Likewise, (21) can be modified as (30), shown at the bottom of
the page, where and
are the charge and discharge power during day-
time, respectively, and is the discharge
power during nighttime. Hence, (30), as a whole, represents
charge and discharge processes that occur for an entire day.
Fig. 16 demonstrates how charging and discharging efficien-
cies affect power transfer. With an assumption that charging and
discharging efficiencies are equal, Fig. 16 shows how the pos-
itive power transfer is reduced and negative power transfer is
increased after applying 80% battery efficiency.
The change in the values of the power transfer results in a
change in the transition probabilities because the probabil-
ities are estimated as the number of occurrences of a power
transfer value divided by the total number of points. Therefore,
the one-step transition probability matrix according to the newly
found transition probabilities can be determined. Following the
same steps described in Section III, the relationship between the
battery’s capacity and availability for various efficiencies can
be found and, as Fig. 17 shows, battery efficiency affects avail-
ability by reducing it with lower efficiencies.
V. CONCLUSION
This paper explored the modeling of the energy transfer
process from PV modules to and from energy storage in order
to quantify output power availability. The presented model is
based on a Markov chain representation of the energy states in
a PV-energy storage system and considers the random nature
of loads during day and nighttime and of PV generation during
daytime, as well as the deterministic null output of PV systems
at night. This model is then demonstrated with actual PV
insolation and load data. The demonstrated results show that
499
Fig. 17. Availability versus storage capacity (2.5-MW PV generation plant and
300-housing load) with various charging and discharging efficiencies.
the developed model allows PV generation to become more
dispatchable with optimal-sized energy storage. Hence, the
proposed model can be used for PV-energy storage system not
only to meet the certain availability, but to avoid over-sizing or
under-sizing capacity, which leads to increased system cost or
inadequate availability, respectively. Furthermore, the proposed
model provides a better understanding of how energy storage
charge and discharge rates are expected to occur in a PV-energy
storage system and affect the power supply availability of
PV generation plants. In particular, this paper presented how
battery capacity degradation by various operating temperatures
affects availability. With the simulated results, it showed that
the aging process of energy storage, which results in capacity
degradation, can be applied to the proposed model, and the
relationship between capacity degradation and availability was
verified by a number of simulations.
In addition, the presented model can be expanded in a number
of applications. For example, wind power plants can also be
considered as a random generation output for the system. The
proposed Markov chain model can also be used to develop a
real-time availability estimator by considering the SOC or en-
ergy level in real-time. Knowing a battery current energy state,
the Markov chain model transition probabilities can then be
used to determine availability at that moment. In other words,
the probability of a PV-energy storage system being insuffi-
cient to power the load can be evaluated in real-time using the
real-time SOC information.
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Junseok Song (S’06) received the B.S. degree in
electrical and computer engineering from Hanyang
University, Seoul, Korea, in 2004, and the M.S.E.
degree in electrical engineering from the University
of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, in 2008, where he
is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in
electrical engineering.
His research interests are in the area of mathemat-
ical modeling of renewable energy sources and en-
ergy storage systems. By the time of the publication
of this paper, he is expected to be a faculty member
at John Brown University (Siloam Springs, AR).
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY, VOL. 4, NO. 2, APRIL 2013
Vaidyanathan Krishnamurthy (S’11) received the
B.E. degree in electrical and electronics engineering
from the Rashtreeya Vidyalaya College of Engi-
neering (RVCE), Bangalore, India, in 2006, and the
M.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering
from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010.
He is currently enrolled in the doctoral program
in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Depart-
ment, University of Texas at Austin. His research in-
terests are in dynamical systems and statistical mod-
eling applied to power systems.
Alexis Kwasinski (S’03–M’07) received the B.S.
degree in electrical engineering from the Buenos
Aires Institute of Technology (ITBA), Buenos Aires,
Argentina, the Graduate Specialization degree in
telecommunications from the University of Buenos
Aires in 1997, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees
in electrical engineering from the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in 2005 and 2007,
respectively.
From 1993 to 1997, he was with Telefonica of
Argentina designing and planning telephony outside
plant networks. Then, he was with Lucent Technologies Power Systems (later
Tyco Electronics Power Systems) for five years as a Technical Support Engineer
and a Sales Technical Consultant in Latin America. For three years, he was also
a part-time instructor in charge of ITBA’s Telecommunications Laboratory.
He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin. His current research
interests include power electronics, distributed generation, renewable and
alternative energy, smart grids, and analysis of the impact of natural disasters
on critical power infrastructure, which included site damage assessments after
several natural disasters in Japan, New Zealand, U.S., and Chile.
Dr. Kwasinski was a member of the Executive Committee of the Argen-
tine Electrotechnical Association during the years 1994 and 1995. In 2005, he
was awarded the Joseph J. Suozzi INTELEC Fellowship, and in 2007, he re-
ceived the best technical paper award at INTELEC. In 2009, he received the
National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award and in 2011 he received
an IBM Faculty Innovation Award. He is an Associate Editor for the IEEE
TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION.
Ratnesh Sharma (M’10) received the B.Tech.
(Hons.) degree from Indian Institute of Technology,
Kharagpur, and the M.S./Ph.D. degree from the
University of Colorado at Boulder.
He leads the Energy Management Depart-
ment at NEC Laboratories America, Inc. Prior to
joining NEC Labs, he was a Principal Scientist at
Hewlett-Packard Labs. His research interests span
sustainable energy management in electricity, build-
ings, and transportation sectors including energy
conversion, power systems, communications, and
analytics. He has authored more than 135 papers/technical reports and holds
60 U.S. patents.