Development of a three-phase battery energy storage scheduling and operation system for low voltage distribution networks

Three phase battery energy storage (BES) installed in the residential low voltage (LV) distribution network can provide functions such as peak shaving and valley filling (i.e. charge when demand is low and discharge when demand is high), load balancing (i.e. charge more from phases with lower loads and discharge more to phases with higher loads) and management of distributed renewable energy generation (i.e. charge when rooftop solar photovoltaics are generating). To accrue and enable these functions an intelligent scheduling system was developed. The scheduling system can reliably schedule the charge and discharge cycles and operate the BES in real time. The scheduling system is composed of three integrated modules: (1) a load forecast system to generate next-day load profile forecasts; (2) a scheduler to derive an initial charge and discharge schedule based on load profile forecasts; and (3) an online control algorithm to mitigate forecast error through continuous schedule adjustments. The scheduling system was applied to an LV distribution network servicing 128 residential customers located in an urban region of South East Queensland, Australia.