Electric utilities are increasingly incentivized to integrate new renewable energy generation resources to their systems; however, operations-related issues arise due to the non-dispatchable and stochastic nature of these renewable energy sources. These characteristics lead to a variety of issues for utilities, among which are voltage fluctuations, balancing dispatch against ramping events, short-duration power fluctuations, and the need to invest in peaking generation facilities just to accommodate the renewable energy. A traditional solution to these issues is to employ renewable generation-following techniques using either newly constructed gas peaking plants, or by shifting existing generation resources to this following responsibility. Unfortunately, use of these traditional methods introduces a new set of issues; namely, wear-and-tear due to more frequent cycling, reduced capacity factors, decreased plant efficiency, and additional investment in large-scale captital infrastructure. This thesis proposes an alternate solution: a utility-owned and utility-managed battery energy storage system sited on residential customer premises, deployed at scale to create a 200MW / 1320MWh distributed network of Residential Battery Energy Storage Systems (ResBESS). In partnership with Portland General Electric (PGE) stakeholders, a conceptual design was prepared for a ResBESS unit, a laboratory prototype of a single such storage system was constructed, and an alpha prototype is now being installed in a field demonstration project in Milwaukie, Oregon within PGE's service territory. The motivations, design constraints, and design methodology of the laboratory prototype are presented and discussed, and preliminary work from the field prototype build is examined to demonstrate the results of the thesis project.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pdx.edu/oai:pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu:open_access_etds-4020 |
| Date | 09 June 2016 |
| Creators | Wilson, Joseph Nathanael |
| Publisher | PDXScholar |
| Source Sets | Portland State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Dissertations and Theses |
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