Advanced Energy Storage System for Renewable Energy Generation in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka being a nation which has set a futuristic aim of driving the island to a new level of sustainability in
power generation is now in the process of increasing its share of renewable generation to 50% by the end of 2030.
With the patronage of the government and private sector investments grid connected solar, wind and mini hydro
are keep getting added to the energy mix at a speedy rate. However the wind turbines only operate in windy
conditions, and solar cells do not work at night. Sometimes they continue generate electricity more during off
peak durations where demand is low. There is virtually no way to store that surplus energy on today’s grid. In
fact the system control operators have an additional workload of maintaining the instantaneous balance between
total electric supply and demand with the addition of more and more intermittent renewables to the national grid.
These issues necessitate the adaptation of energy storage system to smooth out this variability of renewables.

Under the long term generation plan of CEB, for renewables to become a major source of base load dispatchable
power, electricity storage systems of multi-MW capacity and multi-hours duration are absolutely necessary. Even
though this technology has not been actively used in Sri Lanka, currently there are many promising technologies
like Battery Storages and Pumped Hydro which are closely related to our future energy mix. Energy storage
system will reduce the need of costly diesel power plants which are being dispatched to cater the peak power
demand. They also possess the ability to respond rapidly on occasional power outages by supplying the power to
bridge the gaps until backup generation. So it will improve the reliability of the network. Advanced electricity
storage system has the potential to deliver significant environmental, economic and energy diversity benefits to
Sri Lanka.

The aim of this research is to carry out an extensive feasibility study on advanced energy storage system that can
be adopted to Sri Lankan network. Feasibility study is intended to cover the streams of financial, technical and
environmental aspects. Proposed Energy Storage System (ESS) can be categorized in to 2 main schemes based
on their way of utilization. ESS for Power Quality Management where fast-acting storage devices are utilized to
respond to short, unexpected interruptions in the power supply or sudden spikes to improve the reliability of the
network. While ESS for Energy Management which respond on a longer time scale with a greater quantities of
energy which has to be dispatched during peak hours or long power outages to improve the economic aspects of
power generation. Role of power electronics in ESS which plays a vital part in any energy storage system will
also be analyzed. Research study is planned to carry out using statistical data and software simulations. This
research study is expected to be beneficial for the decision makers towards a sustainable approach to reach an
efficient renewable energy generation system, optimizing the energy supply and demand chain, besides
contributing to achieve high quality of power supply and reliability.