Wind farm-battery energy storage assessment in grid-connected microgrids

Renewable energy has received much attention in the last few decades and more investment is being attracted across the world to boost its contribution towards the existing energy mix. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), many studies have been conducted on the potential of renewable energy sources (RES), such as wind, solar, and geothermal. Many of these studies have revealed that the Kingdom is blessed with an abundance of RES with wind energy being the best after solar. This paper presents an analysis of windfarm distributed generation (WFDG) for energy management strategy in the Eastern Province of KSA. The study investigates the possibility of partially sharing the load of the area from a wind farm of 100 MW installed capacity. Furthermore, the effect of supplementing the WFDG with diesel generators is explored. Based on the historical wind resources and the load data, the cost of electricity is analyzed using a dynamic pricing system. Simulations are carried out using quadratically constrained pro-gram available in the General Algebraic Modeling System to obtain the operational cost of the WFDG needed to achieve the target. The dispatch of the battery energy storage system is analyzed during the 24 hours’ simulation period. Results showed the overall quantitative responses of the microgrid on the demand, power exchange, and dynamic pricing across all scenarios. Additionally, the study showed that it is crucial to consider the operation of a microgrid at different sites independently. The performance analysis showed that a loss of power supply probability of less than 1% is achievable in all scenarios.