Proceedings of the 14th International Middle East Power Systems Conference (MEPCON10), Cairo University, Egypt, December 19-21,

2010, Paper ID 253.

Studying the Effect of Decentralized Battery Storage to Smooth the Generated Power of a Grid Integrated Wind Energy Conversion System.
Mohamed Ibrahim, Amr Khairy, Hani Hagras, Mina Zaher, Abdellatif El Shafei, Adel Shaltout, and Naser Abdel Rehim.
have witnessed strong technological advancements and continuously decreasing prices of renewable energy generation, especially by wind energy generators (WEGs). Currently, wind driven electricity generators are the most dominant renewable converters that are integrated to the utility grids. The modular and decentralized nature of the WEGs makes them an attractive solution to many regional power suppliers. All wind turbines installed by the end of 2009 worldwide generate 159 GW and produce 340 TWh per annum, equalling 2 % of global electricity consumption, refer to Fig. 1 [1].

Abstract this work investigates the technical possibility of using battery storage in order to smooth the power generated from a grid connected wind energy converter unit. Wind energy has gained much credit in the past two decades as a sustainable energy resource. The penetration of wind energy generators into the electric utility grids is expected to increase to about 203.5 GW within the present decade. Due to the intermittent nature of the wind and the limited reliability of the wind prognoses there have been serious concerns about reliability and operation of the utility power grids. Battery storage is suggested to compensate wind power fluctuations and smooth the power flow to the utility grids. The battery storage in such applications has dynamic operating conditions and is subjected to different degradation mechanisms which stimulate the capacity losses and hence influence the feasibility of their implementation. In this paper, the real behavior, the technical feasibility of the battery and its effect on wind power fed to the utility grid will be judged. The investigated system is simulated using real measurement data of a 600 kW rated power wind turbine. The simulation results of different battery capacities show that the integration of the battery storage has compensated the fluctuations of the generated wind power to match the forecasting value, which smoothed the power fed to the utility grid and allows better grid operation. Moreover, the battery aging model has generated very important information about the battery degradation and available capacity (in this case of about 85%) after one year of operation. Therefore, further investigations with different battery technologies (e.g. Li-Ion and NiMH) and development of intelligent system operation strategy have to be investigated.

Fig. 1. Worldwide installed wind power capacity [1].

HE previous two decades have witnessed great interest in the renewable energy resources as sustainable solutions for the worldwide battle against climate change and reducing the harmful emissions accompanied with conventional fossil fuel based energy generation. Fossil fuels are eventually destined to extinction and the recent years

I. INTRODUCTION

M. Ibrahim and A. Khairy are with the Faculty of Technology and Energy Management, Heilbronn University, Daimlerstr. 35, D-74653, Kuenzelsau, Germany (e-mail: ibrahim@hs-Heilbronn.de) H. Hagras is with the German University in Cairo, Egypt, he is also with the Computational Intelligence Centre, School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK (e-mail: hani@essex.ac.uk) M. Zaher is with the German University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt. Abdellatif El Shafei and Adel Shaltout, are at the Dept. of electrical power engineering, Cairo University, Cairo Egypt Naser Abdel Rehim is at the Dept. of electrical power engineering, Banha University, Banha Egypt

The dependency of the WEGs on the continuously varying wind speed enforces many technical challenges to the process of their integration to the utility grids. the output power of total installed WEGs in Germany can vary seasonally by about 70% [2]. These fluctuations in the generated wind power should be compensated by the utility grid operator in order to assure a stable and reliable power supply. For this compensation process, several techniques are adopted, mainly by controlling of local or regional conventional power stations, or even by purchasing energy of unpredictable dynamic price from the market [3]. This fluctuation compensation process is combined with energy loss due to transformation of the controlling power to long distances. Moreover, the expected high penetration of WEGs connected to the utility grid will cause huge stresses enforced to the grid operation. The use of fast and responsive energy storage media to compensate the power fluctuations from WEGs will result in smoother power output from wind farms. The role of the energy storage in grid connected WEGs is to store a part of

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the generated wind power which exceeds a predefined level. This stored energy will be supplied back to the grid if the generated wind power is less than the predefined level. This smoothing approach reduces strong wind power fluctuations fed into the utility grid. Different storing capacities and technologies have been investigated by [4]-[8] for short periods (seconds) as well as for long periods (several hours). An intermittent storage medium such as the battery represents a cost-effective and feasible solution, since it can be installed beside the WEG and reduces the energy losses caused by long transformation distances [5]. During the operation of the battery storage in continuous charging and discharging processes, different stresses are exerted to the battery structure (plates, grid, and electrolyte) which accelerate its degradation and hence shorten its lifetime. Investigation carried out by [9], [10] shows that battery lifetime varies between 2 to 4 years in renewable systems. Accordingly, high costs of battery maintenance and replacement will be unfeasible. Therefore, the battery degradation has to be considered when operating with WEGs. Battery performance analyses under different conditions have been presented by [11], [12]. Many difficulties are assigned to the estimation of the actual battery capacity and its internal state of health during operation. A quasi-static battery characteristics model will result in unreliable control strategies as has been indicated by [11]. Also, mathematical modelling of the degradation mechanisms was evaluated by [13]. However, most of the mathematical modelling techniques require many set parameters and do not cover the most critical ageing effect in the battery, which is the capacity degradation. Fuzzy agents can be regarded as knowledge-based management techniques offering a rich environment for modelling and investigating the battery capacity degradation in WEG systems. Previous investigation in modelling the battery using fuzzy logic has been carried out, for example, by [14] where the dynamic performances of the battery voltage and state-of-charge (SOC) have been investigated. However, this work does not consider the battery degradation which is essential if the reliability in renewable energy applications is to be considered [10]. This work investigates the usage of the lead-acid battery storage for compensating the power fluctuation of a grid connected WEG. The battery performance will be investigated using fuzzy agent as a degradation estimator model of the battery. Many years of experience in battery operation are available and documented in several studies. This knowledge will be used to develop the fuzzy agent and its performance in WEG systems will be introduced. Section II discusses the integration of WEGs to utility grids and highlights the accompanied technical challenges. Section III discusses the development of the fuzzy-agent used in modeling the battery capacity degradation, as well as the case study with real data and simulation results using

different storage capacities connected to the used WEG. Finally, conclusion and future work are presented in the final section II. GRID INTEGRATION OF WEGS As the amount of wind energy in the electricity grid increases, new challenges emerge concerning the grid operation and power flow stabilization. Initially built for traditional power sources, the grid is not yet fully adapted to the foreseen levels of wind energy, and nor are the ways in which it is designed and operated [15]. Wind power variation can be treated as variation in the load demand, not only more frequent but also more difficult to predict [16], [17]. Owing to the present limitations in wind speed forecast, the actual values for wind power can differ from the forecasted ones by 5 to 20%, and therefore posing challenges for the primary and secondary control of the power system. Due to the advancements in power electronics (e.g. frequency converters) during the last two decades, the supplied voltage and frequency at the grid side as well as the wind turbines points of connection can be kept within the power system standards [8]. In the case of stiff grids, penetration levels of wind energy generation up to 20-30 % can be tolerated without disturbing their stability [7]. As the penetration levels are expected to increase all over the world, reliable solutions have to be enforced in order to smooth the power fluctuations from grid-connected WEGs. Energy storage mechanisms are proposed as a solution to the future problem.

Fig. 2 WEG system topology integrated with battery storage and the monitoring and diagnosis fuzzy agent.

A short-term energy storage element (super-capacitor) in a DFIG operated WEG has been investigated by [6]. The super-capacitor offers storage ranging up to a few minutes. This configuration proved to enhance the performance of the WEG during transients and low-voltage ride-through periods. Lead-acid (Pb) and nickel-cadmium (NiCd) batteries are dominant for their well-established technologies and tested

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behaviour. In [7], a number of studies were used to prove that energy storage with several minutes of storage capacity is optimum for stabilizing wind generation in weak grids. However, this study did not include the degradation of the battery which can potentially influence its feasibility in such applications. This paper proposes the introduction of an AC-coupled battery parallel to the wind turbine, as shown in Fig. 2. Generally the battery can contribute to the reduction of the fluctuations in the wind power fed to the grid. When the actual speed varies from the forecasted value, the battery can be charged or discharged to decrease or even eliminate the difference between the predicted and actual generated wind powers. III. BATTERY AGEING MODEL AND POWER BALANCE A. Development of the Fuzzy Agent for Capacity Loss Estimation Three main mechanisms are responsible for capacity reduction in the lead-acid battery, namely grid corrosion, sulphation of the negative electrode, and sulphation accumulation. Battery ageing estimation model is developed and verified using fuzzy-logic algorithms. The process involves different sub-modules of fuzzy logic [18]. Sample of the Fuzzy-RuleBased is given in Fig. 3.

The measured data is 5 minutes average wind speed at 30 m height and the corresponding generated wind power from March 2003 to February 2004. Output power from the turbine was considered as the actual instantaneous power produced by the turbine, i.e. power fed to the grid if the battery were not installed. The forecasted wind speed and hence the output power forecast were not available for the case study, therefore; the forecasted output power was rather calculated. C. Simulated battery capacity The simulated battery capacities are chosen to range from 5- to 30-minutes of the rated WEG power. At the end of the year, the performance of the battery is tested with respect to its actual capacity (in percentage of the initial capacity) and the average state of charge (SOC) as the degradation development criteria. D. Wind-battery power balance The aim of the power management strategy is to keep the wind power fed to the grid equal to the forecasted value. The battery is used as a buffering medium to compensate the differences between the actual and the forecasted output powers. The expected (forecasted) output power throughout a certain period of time is calculated as the average of the available measured values during this period. In the present case study, we shall present the influence of calculating the average value from one, two and four hours of readings, and taking it as the forecasted value during the chosen period. The power balance between the wind turbine, battery storage and the utility grid is formulated as follows: Pgrid = Pwind + PChg / Disch (1)
Pexcess / shortage = Pexp ected Pwind PChg / disch

(2)

where, PChg/Disrch is the power charged (-ve) or discharged (+ve) into /from the battery, PExcess/Shortage is the excess /shortage energy spilled into or deprived from the gird. PExpected is the forecasted power, i.e. calculated mean value, and PGrid is the power fed from the whole system to the electrical power system. IV.
Fig. 3. The overall input/output surface of the fuzzy-agent rules. RESULT ANALYSIS

B. WEG System and Measurement Specifications The grid connected WEG integrated with battery storage, as shown in Fig. 2, is modeled and simulated via MATLAB/Simulink. Measured data used in the present case study are taken from a wind turbine located at Luckau in the East of Germany. The investigated wind turbine is of the type E-40/6.44 provided by the company Enercon. The turbine has a rated power of 600 KW, a rotor diameter of 44 meters and a 78 meter hub high. The E-40/6.44 is a gearless turbine that adopts the variable-speed operation topology and is connected to the grid through a synchronous generator.

The simulation is conducted for different storage and different forecasted average powers as mentioned above. The performance of the used battery was investigated with respect to the actual capacity after one year of operation, in comparison to the initial capacity. The results presented in Fig. 4 show that batteries with smaller storage capacities (5 minutes of storage) have outperformed other batteries with higher capacities (10 to 30 min). The reason for this behavior is shown in Fig. 5 which shows that batteries with lower capacities have a higher average SOC and therefore spend less time in deep discharge conditions. Fig. 6 and 7 show the excess and shortage energy, respectively, in percentage to the total energy available from the WEG. Its obvious that the percentage of shortage and excess power decreases as the battery capacity increases.

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Good performance is proven by the battery of high capacity; shortage energy is shown to be less than 2 % whereas the excess energy is almost 0.5 %. One week of system operation is shown in Fig. 8. The forecasted output power was assumed to remain constant along each hour of operation and was calculated as the average value of 5 minutes measurements. The power actually fed to the utility grid is compared to that forecasted by the grid operator. For the case of a WEG without storage, shown in Fig. 8-a, the intermittent nature of the WEG power fed to the grid can be noticed clearly. However, by adding 5or 30-minutes of storage capacity, the WEG power fed to the grid is strongly smoothed as shown in Fig. 8-b and -c. As battery storage is integrated, the power fed to the grid is seen to follow the expected power from the utility grid operator to a very high extent throughout the week. This will simplify the grid operation, since the forecasted wind power can be more reliably scheduled by the grid management. Moreover, the deviation from the forecasted value at some times during the week can be compensated with intelligent decentralized management. However, the quick capacity degradation of the battery is a contra effect. Further phases in this work will be dedicated to investigate different battery technologies such as NiMH or Li-Ion. Moreover, intelligent management strategies will be investigated for improving the battery performance and compensating generation deviation. V. CONCLUSIONS This paper investigated the performance of a lead-acid battery in scheduling wind power flow to the utility grid. In this work, the performance of a WEG is simulated using a real measurement of the E40/6.44 wind turbine with rated power of 600 kW. Also, different sizes of the Pb-battery storage and its sophisticated ageing mechanisms have been considered in the investigation. The simulation results showed that smaller storage sizes (about 5-minutes of wind rated power) and longer forecasting steps of wind power

Fig. 6. Excess of energy under different storage capacities.

Fig. 7. Shortage of energy under different storage capacities.

(about 4-hours ahead) have the minimum degradation influence upon the battery capacity. However, in order to achieve high scheduling reliability of the wind power fed to the utility grid, larger storage sizes (about 30-minutes of the rated wind power) are expected. This can simplify the scheduling of the secondary and primary regulating power stations, since the forecast of the wind generation is of a higher reliability with using the storage medium. Accordingly, cost reduction of the reserve power capacities and more reliable grid operation are expected. However, huge capacity degradation detected by the ageing mechanisms of the battery is the consequence. Further investigations will target different battery technologies (e.g. Li-ion and NiMH) and intelligent decentralized management techniques. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the German International Office of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (IB-BMBF) and the Egyptian Science and Technology Development Fund (STDF) for cofinancing the project entitled Evaluation of Fuzzy Control Algorithms in Wind Energy Conversion Systems, STDF 599 (EGY-08-045). The authors would like also to thank Fraunhofer-Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology (IWES) for the wind measurements. REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] [4] WWEA, World Wind Energy Report 2009, World Wind Energy Association March 2010. K Rohrig, and J. Schmid, Technical and Economical Aspects of the Grid Integration of German Onshore and Offshore Wind Potential, final Rep. Fraunhofer IWES (ISET), Kassel, Germany 2004. G. N. Bathurst and G. Strbac, Value of combining energy storage and wind in short-term energy and balancing markets, Electric Power Systems Research, vol. 67, pp. 18, 2003. P. Coppin, L. Lam, A. Ernst, Using Intelligent Storage to Smooth Wind Energy Generation, in 2007 IRES II Int. Renewable Energy Storage conference.

Fig. 4. Actual capacity after one year of operation; different battery capacities and different average values.

Fig. 5. Average state-of-charge shown for different battery capacities and different average values.

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K. C. Divya and J. stergaard, Battery energy storage technology for power systems- An overview, Electric Power Systems Research, vol. 79, pp. 511520, 2009. [6] C. Abbey and G. Joos, Supercapacitor Energy Storage for Wind Energy Applications, IEEE Trans. Industry Applications, vol. 43, pp. 769776, May/June 2007. [7] Jim McDowall, Integrating energy storage with wind power in weak electricity grids, Journal of Power Sources 162, pp. 959964, 2006. [8] B. Fox, D. Flynn, Leslie Bryans, et al, Wind Power Integration: connection and system operational aspects. London: The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2007, ch. 3, 4. [9] M. Rothert, M. Wollny and B. Willer et al.,Ladezustandsbestimmung von Bleibatterien -Begriffsbestimmungen, Referenzverfahren, Testdatenstze, presented at the 14. Symposium Photovoltaische Solarenergie, Staffelstein, Germany, 1999. [10] M. Ibrahim, Development of an Optimized Control Concept for Decentralized Photovoltaic Hybrid Systems, International Journal of Distributed Energy Resources, Vol. 5/ No. 1 (2009). [11] R. Weiss and J. Appelbaum, Battery State of Charge Determination in Photovoltaic Systems, Journal of the Electrochemical Sc. and Tech., Vol. 129, No. 9, 1982. [12] M. Ibrahim, M. Rothert, Operation of Stand-Alone PV Hybrid Systems Battery Performance and Durability, in Proc. 17th EPVSE Conference and Exhibition, Munich, Germany 22-26 Oct. 2001,.

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[13] K. Reiner, Energetischer Vergleich von Batteriesystemen Modellierung und Kenngren, E&M Energie und Management, Verlagsgesellschaft, Starnberg, Germany, 1996. [14] A. J. Davis and Z. M. Salameh, Fuzzy logic modeling of a gridconnected wind/photovoltaic system with battery storage, IEEE Trans. Industry Applications, vol. 43, pp. 769776, May/June 2007. [15] European Wind Energy Association, Integrating Wind, Developing Europes power market for the large-scale integration of wind power, Project report, Feb. 2009. [16] F. D. Bianchi, H. D. Battista and R. J. Mantz, Wind Turbine Control Systems: principles, modeling and gain scheduling design, London: Springer-Verlag, 2007, ch. 3, 4. [17] T. Ackermann, Wind Power in Power Systems. Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2005, ch. 3, 4. [18] M. Ibrahim, A. Khairy, H. Hagras, and M. Zaher, Using a Fuzzy Agent in Modeling Lead-Acid Battery Operating in Grid Connected Wind Energy Conversion Systems, in 2010 WCCI World Congress on Computational Intelligence.

(a)

(b)

(c) Fig. 8. Power fed to the grid for: (a) WEG without battery, (b) with 5-miutes storage capacity, and (c) with 30-mintes storage capacity

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