System Implementation and Preliminary Results of a Community Battery Energy Storage System

All power systems have some inherent level of flexibility as loads change over time and sometimes in unpredictable ways. In addition, as renewable energy sources (RES) are intermittent in nature (this is more common to wind systems and less for PV systems) increasing their share in the energy mix means the demand/supply balance will be even harder to achieve through the existing inflexible conventional power plans. Battery energy storage systems (BESS) are a promising technology that can provide flexibility., reliability, and resilience to the power grid. This paper focuses on the analysis of the first-ever community BESS installed in Cyprus, in terms of system integration, control strategies, and overall system operation. At the end of the paper, recommendations for further exploitation of the community BESS are given, such as the possibility of providing ancillary services to the distribution grid.