Responding to the renewable base load challenge

Utility-scale battery storage is growing in leaps and bounds, with the US Energy Information Administration estimating it will reach 30 GW by 2025. This is a strong indication of the successful uptake of the technology to mitigate both shortterm and intraday imbalances in renewable power generation.

“To work effectively though, utility-scale battery storage requires a sophisticated energy management system (EMS) to provide insight into daily usage, provision, supply and so forth,” explains Dwibin Thomas, cluster leader: Digital Automation, Schneider Electric.

“The hardware includes battery modules, battery racks, protection devices and inverters that convert the direct current (DC) of the battery into the alternating current (AC) of the coupled power grid. In turn, the key software components are the EMS, the battery management system (BMS) and a supervisory control and data acquisition system (Scada).”

As Thomas points out, the EMS acts as a higher-level operating system, which integrates to external systems and manages the response to changes in demand and supply. Meanwhile, the function of the BMS is to monitor the performance data of the battery modules and to regulate their charging and discharging. In turn, the Scada controls and monitors all the processes of the battery system in real time while collecting data on the system’s performance, such as voltage, current and temperature, and provides alerts if there are any issues.

“Lastly, and this is a key benefit, battery storage can provide power to the grid in a matter of seconds, allowing for a seamless switchover between distributed energy resources – thereby providing stable supply to users,” Thomas concludes.