Control Strategies of BESS for Compensating
Renewable Energy Fluctuations
N. Z. Xu
Department of Electrical Anhui New Energy Utilization and
Engineering Energy Saving Laboratory
The Hong Kong Polytechnic Hefei University of Technology
University
Hong Kong mingding56@126.com
robertr900@gmail.com
Abstract— Random power fluctuations caused by uneven output
of renewable energy such as large wind farms and PV plants can
be smoothened by Battery Energy Storage System (BESS).
Considering the constraints of battery operation and
requirements of power grids, this paper first formulates an
optimization problem to determine the charging-discharging
control strategies of BESS. The dynamic programming algorithm
is then applied to solve the proposed problem. The numerical
results show that the proposed model is effective in smoothening
the power output of renewable energy.
Keywords— BESS; NaS battery; power fluctuation; dynamic
programming
I. INTRODUCTION
With the booming utilization of renewable energy, the
demand for bulk electricity storage systems looms large in
power systems nowadays [1]. While offering extra energy,
volatility of intermittent renewable energy sources (RES) such
as wind farms and PV plants can cause additional problems
for the power system balancing functions by causing much
turbulence in grids. Conventional thermal electricity
generation with spinning reserve cannot efficiently stabilize
the rapidly changing output of energy sources. As a
consequence, utilities have to limit weather-based energy
sources connected to the grids. For example, China has
provided regulations on the power ramp rate of grids
connected wind farms [2]. Battery energy storage systems
(BESS) [3] can react instantly to disturbances and compensate
the ramp rate of thermal generators. However, due to
shortcomings such as low capacity, high discharging rate,
short cycle life and other operational limitations, conventional
battery technologies such as lead acid batteries have not
achieved mass applications in power systems. On the contrary,
novel battery storage technologies have the advantages like
possessing high energy-volume rate, low discharge rate and
long cycle life even under deep Depth of Discharge (DOD). In
addition, compared with the pumped storage hydro power
plants, a BESS is not geographically limited and is able to
respond more quickly [1]. All these promising features make
modern BESS feasible for smoothening power output of
intermittent renewable power generation.
This work was supported by the Department of Electrical Engineering of
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Ming Ding C. Y. Chung
Department of Electrical
Engineering
The Hong Kong Polytechnic
Anhui, China University
Hong Kong
eecychun@polyu.edu.hk
Unlike its static duty, which is also known as peak shaving
or load leveling [4], a dynamic duty of BESS is to eliminate
the frequent imbalances in power supply. In this respect, the
maximum power output is more important than the energy
capacity for a BESS. Many novel battery technologies like
sodium sulfur (NaS) battery, lithium battery and vanadium
battery have the abilities to carry pulse power, which is much
higher than the rated power output. In this paper, NaS battery
is considered.
On RES side or on demand side, there are two objectives a
utility can achieve by operating a BESS. One is to compensate
the differences between power injection and load demand. By
calculating the frequency deviation or the expected energy not
supplied (EENS), with and without BESS, the effect of BESS
can be estimated. This method can be used to operate a BESS
in a system with small turbulences such as regional isolated
systems and micro grids [5] [6]. The other objective is to
minimize the rate of change in the total output of RES and
BESS so that the total output can be in accordance with the
requirements and the regulations. This objective is often the
target when operating on-site BESS connected directly to RES
[2] [7]. In this paper, the second objective of BESS operation
is used to deal with the ever-changing power output of RES.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II presents an
optimization model of BESS to determine control strategies
for minimizing power fluctuation; Section III gives the
solution to this model with practical consideration of the
battery of BESS. The calculation results and the conclusions
are presented in Sections IV and V, respectively.
I. OPTIMIZATION MODEL
As stated in the above section, the BESS operation strategy
used in this paper is to limit the rate of change of real power
output of RES simultaneously so that the total output of RES
and BESS can be within the maximum allowable value [2].
A. Model Objectives
 Minimize: where,
288 uc: Flag of BESS charging.
¦ >P t   P t  1@
2
sum sum (1)
t 1
Plim(t): Available power capacity for BESS charging
at time t (MW).
s.t.
SOCmax(t): Maximum SOC setting of a BESS (MWh).
Psum t  Pwind t   PPV t   PBESS t  (2)
ı: Self-discharging rate (%).
SOC(t): State of charge of the BESS at time t (MWh).
PBESS t  ˜ 't N BESS ˜ >SOCd t   SOCc t @ (3)
Pc: Rated Charging power of a BESS (MW).

where, Șc: Charging efficiency of a BESS.

Psum(t): Total real power output of RES and BESS at Equation (4) and (5) describe the charging and discharging
time t (MW). conditions of BESS, respectively. The upper limits of a BESS’
charging and discharging energy at time t are determined not
Pschedule(t): Scheduled power value at time t (MW). only by its rated power, but also by energy stored in the BESS
and the additional power capacity available in the system at
Pwind(t): Real power output of wind farms at time t time t, as shown in (6). In this paper, ı is assumed to be
(MW). 0.05%/5min; the SOCmax and SOCmin are assumed to be 5%
PPV(t): Real power output of PV plants at time t and 95% of a BESS’ rated energy capacity, respectively. A
(MW). BESS is in floating charging state when uc and ud both equal
to 0. To eliminate the conflict between charging and
PBESS(t): Real power output of BESS at time t (MW). discharging, (7) is considered.
(negative for charging, positive for
discharging).
C. Constraints on SOC of BESS
ǻt: Time interval, which is 1/12 hour in this
paper. SOC t  1  V  ˜ SOC t  1  SOCc t 
NBESS: Number of BESS installed on RES side.  SOCd t   SOCloss t  (8)
SOCd(t): State of charge of the BESS decreased due to
discharging at time t (MWh).
SOCc(t): State of charge of the BESS increased due to 8  N pluse t  ˜ d N pluse t 
SOCloss t  u d ˜ Pd ˜ 't ˜
d N pluse t 
charging at time t (MWh). (9)

Objective (1) considers the power change in 5 minute

intervals after using BESS, during a period of 24 hours.
SOC min d SOC t  d SOC max (10)
B. Constraints on charging and discharging of BESS

­0 d SOCc t  d uc ˜ MIN ^Plim t , >SOCmax  1  V  ˜ SOCmin d SOC 1 d SOCavg d SOCmax (11)

°
® SOC t  1@, Pc ˜Kc ˜ 't`, uc  ud z 0
°SOC t  V ˜ SOC t  1, u  u 0 (4)
¯ c c d
1 288
SOCavg ˜ ¦ SOC t  (12)
288 t 1
0 d SOC d t  d u d ˜ MIN ^>1  V  ˜ SOC t  1
 SOC min @, Pd ˜ N pluse ˜K d ˜ 't ` (5)
SOC 1 60% ˜ SOCmax (13)

Plim t  PG t   Pwind t   PPV t   Pload t  (6) where,

SOCloss(t): State of charge lost while a BESS is giving
pulse power at time t (MWh).
­0 d uc  u d d 1 d(Npulse(t)): Pulse duration limit of a BESS at time t
®
¯uc ,u d  ^0 ,1`
(MW).
(7)
SOCavg: Average state of charge of a BESS during a
 day (MWh).
SOC(1): Initial value of state of charge
Equation (8) describes the relationship between SOC of
the BESS at time t and at t-1. A NaS-based BESS can
discharge power from one to five times its rated output
capacity. However, there is a tradeoff. A NaS-based battery
has a so called “pulse limit” which means an additional energy
loss with increased pulse factors. The discharging durations of
the BESS also depends on the pulse factors if the value of the
applied power are more than the rated one [8]-[10]. The
relationship between energy loss and pulse factors can be
obtained by (9) [11]. The constraints on SOC are given by (10)
output or input of a BESS should be discretized into several
fixed levels from 0 to the maximum power.
Additionally, since DP cannot deal with independent
constraints in calculation [18], charging and discharging
constraints of BESS have been converted into different states,
so that SOC constraints are merged into the objectives to make
DP feasible. According to those practical considerations, 19
states are listed in Table I with a series pulse factors and
durations, according to [12]-[15].
Accordingly, to solve the problem presented in this paper,
(14) – (16) are applied, among which constraints (3) and (8)
are replaced by (14) and (15), respectively.
– (13). In order to operating the BESS with enough energy in N BESS ˜ SOCup t 
the next day, the average value of SOC should be greater than PBESS t   (14)
the initial value. So constraint (11), (12) and (13) are applied. 't
The initial SOC (SOC(1)) is assumed to be 60% of the SOCmax
in this paper.
SOC t  1  V  ˜ SOC t  1 
II. PRACTICAL CONSIDERATION & MODEL SOLUTION SOCup t   SOCloss t  (15)
Since the problem described above is a multi-stage
nonlinear one, the theory of dynamic programming (DP) is
considered as one way of solving it. The 288 time intervals are
> @
n
chosen as the stages in DP. The traditional way is to use the a ˜ ¦ Psum
*
t   Psum
*
t  1  2

energy capacity level of a BESS as the state [12], [13]. t 1

However, this can result in some problems. As modern battery
> @
n
b ˜ ¦ SOC
t   SOC
0
2
storage technologies furnish BESS with high energy capacity, , (n 1~ 288) (16)
the SOC of a BESS should be divided into many levels as the t 1
states to keep the result of DP precise. Thus, much more
memory and time are required to be spent in computing where a and b are weighting factors as the formulated problem
process. With this consideration, the possible SOC decrease or is now a multi-objective one. Both should be positive numbers.
increase in a single time interval are chosen as the states in The variables in objectives of this DP algorithm are presented
this paper to reduce the magnitude of the required memory. in per-unit value.
Besides, discrete charge and discharge modes are also adopted
in practical BESS projects [14]-[18]. This means the power
TABLE I
BESS OPERATING REGIMES AND CAPACITY LOSS
No. status Npulse SOCup(t) SOCloss(t)
0 Floating Charge / V · SOC(t-1) 0
1 0.2 0
2 0.4 0
3 Charge 0.6 MIN{[SOCmax-(1-V) · SOC(t-1)],Pc ·Npluse · Kc · 't,Plim} 0
4 0.8 0
5 1.0 0
6 0.2 0
7 0.4 0
8 0.6 0
9 0.8 0
10 1.0 0
11 1.5 1.1667·Pd ·'t
12 Discharge 2.0 -MIN{[(1-V) · SOC(t-1)-SOCmin], Pd ·Npluse ·Kd ·'t} 2·Pd ·'t
13 2.5 2.8333·Pd ·'t
14 3.0 3·Pd ·'t
15 3.5 12.5·Pd ·'t
16 4.0 28·Pd ·'t
17 4.5 59.5·Pd ·'t
18 5.0 91·Pd ·'t

III. NUMERICAL RESULTS
In this section a united RES consisting of a wind farm and
a PV plant are used as an example to test the model. When the
simulated BESS is integrated into the RES side, the results
show that the model can achieve both operational strategies
efficiently.
A. Basic information
In this numerical example, the IEEE-RTS [19] data is used,
including conventional generator (except the combustion
turbines) and the daily load model (the load of the Friday of
the 11th week) on utility side. The total generation is
2906MW. The load finally used is 1.35 times the original
value. The peak load is 2586MW, the minimum load is
1500MW and the average is 2146MW. A typical 6MW,
48MWh is used as the storage of BESS, the rated charge
power of which is 7.2MW. Its charge and discharge efficiency
are both 87%. The total 350MW RES includes wind & solar
power. Wind velocities follow a Weibull distribution (a=8;
k=1.72). The cut-in, cut-out and rated speed of the wind
generators are 3.6m/s, 25m/s and 13m/s, respectively. The
rated output of the PV plant is 50MW. Its output in every time
interval is simulated by a Markov method [20]. A typical
comparison of this PV plant’s output versus time is shown in
Fig. 1.
50
40
Power (MW)
30
20
10
0 2005.
0 50 100 150 200 250
Time
Fig. 1 Output of a simulated PV system
B. Simulation Results
After solving the problem, operational strategy of the on-
site BESS is to minimize the ramp rate of output fluctuations.
Assuming all BESS units receive the same order and have
same operation in every time interval, the fluctuations are
smoothened by 20 on-site BESS units as shown in Fig. 2
where the SOC is expressed in the form of percentage of
BESS’ total energy.
In Fig. 2 the maximum ramp rate of original fluctuation of
the RES is 302.246 MW/10min. It is then reduced to 56.197
MW/10min by BESS, much smaller than the maximum
allowable value in technical rule [2]. Thus, the RES can
provide utility power safely. In addition, the average state of
charge of the BESS is larger than the initial value of the day;
then the BESS can run sustainably to accomplish the next
day’s duty.
400
Power "uctuation(MW)
without BESS with BESS
300
200
100
0
0.8
0.6
SOC
0.4
0.2
0 50 100 150 200 250
Time
Fig. 2 Power fluctuation and SOC curve with and without on-site BESS
(NBESS=20)
IV. CONCLUSION
This paper applies BESS for smoothening power output of
RES. The characteristics of modern battery storage technology
and its practical usage are considered. Numerical results show
that the BESS is able to reduce the fluctuation caused by RES
efficiently. Based on the optimization model presented in this
paper, economic considerations such as operational cost,
environmental contribution, location flexibility and
government subsidies can be involved in further studies to
have a whole view of the modern BESS.
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N. Z. Xu (S’12) received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering
from Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China, in 2008 and 2011,
respectively. Currently, he is pursuing the Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China.
His research interests are in energy storage system and electric vehicle.
Ming Ding received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from Hefei
University of Technology, Hefei, China, in 1982, and the M.E. degree in
electrical engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China, in 1984.
Currently he is a Professor and the Dean at the School of Electrical
Engineering and its Automation, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei,
China, and the Director of the Research Center for Photovoltaic System
Engineering, Ministry of Education, China. His research areas are power
system planning and reliability, renewable energy, and flexible ac
transmission systems. Prof. Ding is a senior member of the Chinese Society
for Electrical Engineering(CSEE).
C. Y. Chung (M’01-SM’07) received the B.Eng. degree (with First Class
Honors) and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from The Hong Kong
Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China, in 1995 and 1999, respectively.
After his Ph.D. graduation, he worked in the Electrical Engineering
Department at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, and
Powertech Labs, Inc., Surrey, BC, Canada. Currently, he is the Convenor of
the Power Systems Research Group and an Associate Professor in the
Department of Electrical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic
University. His research interests include power system stability/control,
planning and operation, computational intelligence applications, power
markets and electric vehicle.
Dr. Chung was the Chairman of IEEE Hong Kong Section in 2011 and
Chairman of the IEEE Hong Kong Joint Chapter of PES/IAS/PELS/IES in
2007-2009. During his tenure as chairman, the Joint Chapter received the
2008 IEEE PES Outstanding Small Chapter Award and the 2009 IEEE IAS
Outstanding Small Joint Chapter Award. He was the Co-chair of IEEE
ICHQP2012 International Conference, Vice-chairman of IET APSCOM2012
International Conference, Technical Chairman of IET APSCOM2009
International Conference, and Honorary Secretary of IEEE DRPT2004
International Conference and IEEE IAS 2005 Annual Meeting.