IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 60, NO.
3, MARCH 2013
Evaluation of Storage Energy Requirements for
Constant Production in PV Power Plants
Hector Beltran, Endika Bilbao, Enrique Belenguer, Member, IEEE, Ion Etxeberria-Otadui, Senior Member, IEEE,
and Pedro Rodriguez, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—This paper analyzes the minimum energy capacity
ratings that an energy-storage (ES) system should accomplish
in order to achieve a defined constant power production in a
photovoltaic (PV) power plant. ES is a key issue for the further in-
tegration of intermittent and stochastic renewable energy sources,
which are not currently dispatchable due to their dependence on
real-time weather conditions, as is the case of PV technology. This
paper proposes and describes an energy management strategy
(EMS) for operating PV power plants with ES in the future. The
goal of this EMS is to endow these power plants with a constant
production that can be controlled and hence traded on electricity
markets. This paper presents simulated results on the percentage
of time throughout the year during which a large-scale PV+ES
plant operates properly with different ES ratings and according
to different configurations of this EMS. Finally, a test bench was
developed, and experimental results validating this EMS were
obtained.
Index Terms—Energy storage (ES), photovoltaic (PV) power
systems, power generation planning.
I. I NTRODUCTION
A CCOMMODATION of changes between electric power
generation and demand is a classical issue in the grid
operation. Flexible generation/demand and spot pricing are
conventional techniques utilized to balance the grid [1]; how-
ever, an important increase in the percentage of critical loads,
together with the recently experienced massive penetration of
renewable energy sources (RESs), is leading to the adoption of
new solutions to balance the grid power fluxes, thus preventing
blackouts and keeping all the operating parameters (voltage,
frequency, etc.) under control. In fact, the variability and the
limited predictability of the power generation for some RESs
have become a serious issue [2] that makes the grid balance in-
Manuscript received September 21, 2011; revised January 31, 2012 and
April 28, 2012; accepted May 16, 2012. Date of publication June 4, 2012; date
of current version October 16, 2012. This work was supported by the Spanish
Ministry of Science and Innovation under Projects ENE 2008-06841-C02/ALT
and TRA2009-0103.
H. Beltran and E. Belenguer are with the Electrical Engineering Area, Uni-
versitat Jaume I, 12071 Castelló de la Plana, Spain (e-mail: hbeltran@uji.es).
E. Bilbao is with the IK4-IKERLAN Technology Research Center, 20500
Arrasate-Mondragón, Spain, and also with the Industrial Electronics Labo-
ratory (LEI), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), 1015
Lausanne, Switzerland.
I. Etxeberria-Otadui is with the IK4-IKERLAN Technology Research Cen-
ter, 20500 Arrasate-Mondragón, Spain.
P. Rodriguez is with the Electrical Engineering Department, Technical
University of Catalonia (UPC), 08222 Terrassa, Spain.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2012.2202353
0278-0046/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE
1225
creasingly difficult to achieve [3]. This is clearly a problem for
further large-scale integration of wind and photovoltaic (PV)
power technologies [4], since these are both truly intermittent
and highly dependent on current weather conditions. Among
the possible solutions, the development of hybrid generation
technologies that combine different RESs and, above all, the
introduction of energy storage (ES) are leading the field as the
clearest candidates to cope with this issue [5], [6]. Wind genera-
tors already represent a significant source of power worldwide,
and in some countries where their penetration is particularly
important, they are required to support controlling the grid.
Thus, the literature already contains different examples of wind
turbines combined with other RESs and ES systems (ESSs) [7],
[8]. ES technologies such as pumped hydro, batteries, fuel cells,
or even ultracapacitors (UCs) have already been analyzed for
wind applications [9], [10].
Conversely, PV power still represents a low share of the
electric production mix in most countries nowadays. However,
the recent growth in the installed PV power capacity and the
future installation trends [11] will force coming PV power
plants to support the grid by also offering ancillary services
(frequency and voltage control, etc.) [12] and a more constant
and reliable production [13]. As a result, the possibility of
implementing ESS in the evolving PV power plants is lately
of particular relevance [14], [15]. In this direction, research
has already been carried out to guarantee a more predictable
production of PV systems by combining them with other RESs
[16], [17] and with different ES technologies, such as fuel
cells [18], batteries [19], [20], or UCs, being very developed
lately [21]. These are not usually introduced alone, except in
isolated PV plants for short-term applications such as feeding
pulsing loads [22], but are instead parallelized to other ESSs
[23]–[25]. However, from the different works reviewing the
state of the art of ES technologies, it can be concluded that
most of them still present energy capacity limitations. This
handicap disqualifies most ES technologies from being used at
the present time in large-scale PV power plants operated under
energy management strategies (EMSs) requiring large amounts
of ES (of the same order of magnitude as the daily energy
production of the PV power plant) to achieve proper long-term
operation.
This paper presents an EMS which puts large-scale PV plants
on a similar level to conventional power plants, i.e., generators
with the capability to provide constant power production during
certain periods throughout the day owing to the use of ESS.
This EMS and a hybrid configuration of power plants (PV+ES)
should allow them to access electricity markets and participate
1226 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 60, NO. 3, MARCH 2013
in the electricity pool. Depending on the duration desired for
the constant-production periods, the EMS provides different
types of power references that require larger or smaller ESS.
Thus, the main contributions of this paper are to determine what
amount of energy capacity is required by the ESS for each EMS
configuration and to demonstrate the technical viability of the
proposal experimentally.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II introduces a
brief overview of the existing ES installations implemented
within PV power plants. In Section III, the EMS that defines
constant power steps with different durations throughout the
day is described. Then, the ESS energy requirements that are
annually estimated for each of these EMS configurations are
presented in Section IV. Section V is devoted to presenting
the test bench where experiments were carried out, and it
introduces the experimental results. Section VI discusses the
resulting ESS energy requirements and their economic viability.
Finally, some conclusions are stated in Section VII.
II. ESS I NTEGRATED I NTO PV P OWER P LANTS
As stated in Section I, ESSs are a serious candidate to be inte-
grated with intermittent RESs, and particularly with PV power
plants, in order to reduce their power production variability and
hence make the production of these power plants constant and
predictable [26]. In this way, PV plants will be able to access
electricity markets and trade their production. Undoubtedly, this
will be a key issue in the near future for further deployment of
PV installations in order to increase their degree of penetration.
Different ES technologies can be considered for integration
within PV power plants. Possibilities range from large-scale
ES technologies, such as pumped hydro ES (PHES) or com-
pressed air ES (CAES), to short-term ESSs, such as UCs or
flywheel ESSs (FESSs). At the midterm level, different battery
technologies such as lead–acid, NiCd, NiMH, NaS, or Li-ion,
as well as various types of flow and air batteries, in addition
to the superconducting magnetic ES technology or even hy-
drogen fuel cells, can be identified. Thus, multiple ESSs are
registered, although their respective states of development vary
to a great extent and not all of them are commercially available.
Moreover, some of them present certain limitations that can
complicate their integration with RESs. Examples that can be
cited include the geographic dependence of PHES and CAES,
the limited energy capacity of UC and FESS, or the response
dynamics and lifespan of certain types of batteries. Therefore,
a good definition of the ESS functioning and environmental pa-
rameters, together with precise operation-based required power
and energy characteristics (to avoid unexpected power plant
production deviations, which would imply economic penalties),
seems essential for the future technical and economic viability
of PV power plants with ES.
Regarding the solar power industry, storage is clearly iden-
tified as fundamental—so much so that the thermoelectric ES
domain has undergone a huge evolution in the last ten years.
However, this boom has not yet reached PV technology, since it
has not traditionally been considered a large-scale technology
that could someday account for an important percentage of the
overall electricity production mix within a country.
Fig. 1. Grid-connected PV power plant with ES scheme.
This perception has recently changed, and different authors
have already been working on PV systems with ES after a first
approach by Chaurey and Deambi in [27]. In this regard, in
[28], Carbone analyzes the introduction of batteries installed
in a distributed manner and how they can improve the energy
production of conventional grid-tied PV plants, particularly in
the presence of mismatching conditions. On the other hand,
Rydh and Sandén analyzed the performance and energy re-
quirements of eight different types of battery technologies that
are being considered for use in isolated PV systems [29].
However, the energy analysis in that work focuses too much
on production and transport requirements. In [30], the same
authors analyzed the energy return factor and the overall effi-
ciency, considering the whole life cycle, for those eight battery
technologies installed in PV systems. Apart from those works,
Datta et al. have recently proposed an advanced fuzzy-logic-
based control for a PV power plant with ES which allows the
frequency to be controlled in a PV–diesel hybrid power system
[16]. Similarly, in [19], Silva et al. analyzed another hybrid
system made up of, in this case, a fuel cell, a PV plant, and a
battery. In this same work, the authors present the sizing and
optimization of the components. On the other hand, in [20],
Joerissen et al. presented the use of a vanadium redox-flow
battery in a stand-alone small grid including a PV system. Also,
for stand-alone PV systems, a short-term application such as
feeding pulsing loads was introduced by Andreotti et al. in [22].
Another short-term application, the PV power ramp rate control
using a UC, was presented by Kakimoto et al. in [23]. Still for
stand-alone PV systems, in [24], Uzunoglu et al. described a
hybrid configuration combining a fuel cell and a UC. Another
hybrid configuration for small PV systems was described by
Fakham et al. in [25]. The PV converter is parallelized in this
case with a battery and a UC. Finally, one last hybrid storage
system consisting of a combination of a fuel cell, batteries, and
a UC was introduced by Maclay et al. in [31]. The authors
proposed a dynamic model to optimize the sizing, costs, and
efficiencies of the different components, as a function of the
control strategy under different stand-alone configurations.
Therefore, from the literature, multiple lines of research
can already be identified worldwide. Nonetheless, it can also
be concluded that, to date, there has not been a great effort
concentrated on large-scale grid-tied PV power plants in order
to evaluate the ES capacity that would be required to achieve
a controlled constant power production of the plant. An EMS
for doing so in a generic grid-tied PV power plant with ES
BELTRAN et al.: EVALUATION OF STORAGE ENERGY REQUIREMENTS FOR PRODUCTION IN PV POWER PLANTS 1227

(like the one shown in Fig. 1, which has been simulated in

Matlab and validated experimentally on a test bench) is pre-
sented in the following. For three different configurations of this
EMS, an estimation of the ES energy capacity requirements is
introduced.

III. EMS
Various EMSs for running PV plants with ES have recently
been analyzed in the literature [25], [32]–[34]. A different EMS
for grid-tied PV power plants with storage is proposed in this Fig. 2. Evolution of the real PV power production pattern for a clear day
paper. The goal of this EMS is to enable PV plants to provide versus the Pgrid that would be defined according to each EMS configuration.
constant production during different periods throughout the
day, as observed in Fig. 1. Thus, the capability to generate
energy in a constant, predictable, and controlled way will allow
PV power plants to trade their energy production on the electric-
ity markets. Moreover, it will also make the generation–demand
balance easier to achieve and more stable, which will allow the
system operator to reduce the number and the power of units on
hot standby that are required to provide the primary frequency
reserve.
The basic functioning of a PV+ES power plant is managed
by the following equation:

Pgrid (t) = (PPV (t) + PES (t)) (1)

with Pgrid being the power to be injected into the grid, PPV
being the instantaneous power provided by the PV panels, and
PES being the current power exchanged by the ES. That is,
in turn
dEES (t) PES
Discharge : PES > 0 → =− (2)
dt εd
dEES (t)
Charge : PES < 0 → = − PES · εc (3)
dt
where EES is the stored energy (available energy), εc is the
charging efficiency, and εd is the discharging efficiency. EES
can be permanently accounted for by means of the state-of-
charge (SOC) control.
The whole system will work, according to this EMS, with a
varying number of constant power steps (from 1 to 24), with
different durations in hours and different power levels
Pgrid = {p1 , p2 , . . . , p24 }. (4)
Among the possible power pattern configurations, those three
in Fig. 2 have been considered in this paper. These are as
follows.
1) The single constant power step (1SCPS) configuration. It
defines a Pgrid presenting only one power step throughout
the daytime. Different variants of this configuration have
been analyzed with durations ranging from 4 to 14 h.
2) The four-level constant power step (4LCPS) configura-
tion. It defines a Pgrid incorporating four different power
steps throughout the sun hours.
3) The hourly constant power step (HCPS) configuration. It
defines a Pgrid with 24 power values (one per hour).
Fig. 3. Optimization process flowchart.
Thus, while the HCPS would seem the most advantageous
option to enter the pool market, the 1SCPS would be the best
alternative to support an easier system operation, since PV
power plants could even be considered base load generators.
However, ESS sizing requirements will completely differ for
each of them (higher energy required for fewer steps).
There are two main parameters which determine the per-
formance and cost of the whole system: the energy rating of
the ESS (EES ) and the desired constantness of the production
(determined by the number of power steps per day and their
associated Pgrid values). These two parameters are coupled
for an optimal design solution, and they cannot be defined
simultaneously. Thus, a two-step optimization process is used
to handle this problem. It first defines the desired behavior of
the plant with respect to the grid (the number of power steps
and their characteristics, which are the decision variables of
the optimization process) and then optimizes the ESS capacity
ratings in an annual basis.
The implemented optimization process is shown in Fig. 3.
If the ESS rating is not defined, an initial arbitrary sizing of
1228 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 60, NO. 3, MARCH 2013

the ESS (ESS_Init) is taken. Then, the PV+ES power plant

production pattern is optimized (EMS Optimization) according
to the EMS configuration to be analyzed and to a statistical
radiation model [35], which defines the ideally expected PV
production evolution.
The goal of the Pgrid optimization is to keep the SOC level
of the ESS as close as possible to a reference value at all times.
This allows minimizing the energy capacity ratings of the ESS.
Accordingly, this optimization is defined by


720
F (Pgrid ) = min (SOCt − SOCref )2 (5)
t=0

with SOCt being the ESS SOC at any sampled moment during
the analysis and SOCref being the reference value of the SOC,
which presents a typical value of 50% of the ESS energy
capacity, with the aim of avoiding ESS energy saturations.
Therefore, it is a quadratic optimization type which, for the
case of the HCPS configuration, is subject to the following
constraints:

 0 ≤ p1 ≤ Pgrid_ max ∀t = 0, . . . , 30

0 ≤ p2 ≤ Pgrid_ max ∀t = 31, . . . , 60
Pgrid (t)= (6)

 · · · ···
0 ≤ p24 ≤ Pgrid_ max ∀t = 691, . . . , 720
Pgrid (t) = PPV (t) + PES (t) ∀t = 0, . . . , 720
Pmin < PES (t) < Pmax ∀t = 0, . . . , 720
EES (t) = EES (t − 1) − T · PES ∀t = 0, . . . , 720
Emin < EES (t) < Emax ∀t = 0, . . . , 720.
The total number of samples considered in the optimization
(N = 720) corresponds to the number of 2-min intervals in one
day, which is the time used as the sampling period for the analy-
sis performed in this paper. Therefore, each of the hourly power
step references that are defined with the optimization lasts for
30 samples [see (6)]. Another four additional restrictions are
also introduced. Those in (7) and (8) establish the functioning
of the power plant, already introduced in (1), and also some
limitations in the power value that can be assigned to the ESS,
respectively. On the other hand, restrictions in (9) and (10) are
focused on how the SOC of the ESS evolves throughout the
daytime and what the SOC level limits to these variations are.
Finally, note also that no charging or discharging efficiency
coefficients have been introduced in the model, which would
interfere in (9), because they involve a nonlinear behavior of
the system. Nonetheless, these coefficients have been included
in the next step of the flowchart. Once the initial Pgrid has been
optimized (EMS_Opt), the optimal ESS ratings to operate the
system with that given EMS configuration are calculated (ESS
Sizing Optimization). This is done considering real annual
radiation values (Annual Radiation) and including the charging
or discharging efficiency coefficients.
Finally, the plant can be operated with the proposed EMS
and based on the optimal ESS calculated previously (ESS_Opt).
The EMS is then reevaluated taking into account the expected
radiation for the present day (Expected Radiation); this allows
applying a daily energy adjustment over the previously defined
Fig. 4. Ten-day evolution of (a) the real PV power production versus plant
power one-single-step reference and (b) the SOC evolution of the ESS.
(7) Pgrid in order to obtain a daily balanced production (PV ↔
(8) PV + ES).
An example of the system performance in accordance with
(9) the 1SCPS configuration can be observed in Fig. 4(a). It rep-
(10) resents a 10-h 1SCPS Pgrid over the real PV production for a
ten-day period. The daily energy adjustment of the Pgrid can be
observed in the different values of power defined for each of the
days registered. By means of that daily energy adjustment, the
ESS should only vary then its SOC level each day by as much
as its internal losses produced during the daytime operation
(round-trip efficiency). However, given that the ESS operation
losses cannot be calculated in advance because they depend
mainly on the amount of daily energy going in and out of the
ESS, these cannot be introduced in the calculated Pgrid . Thus,
losses in the ESS tend to finally unbalance the equilibrium of
the system every day. This would lead to a change in the final
daily SOC. Thus, a complementary daily recharge adjustment
also has to be programmed. This adjustment is only activated
during the night hours, when no power is compromised by
the PV+ES power plant. Thus, during these hours, the ESS
will behave like another system load, recharging the ESS from
the grid to achieve a desired SOC value before starting opera-
tion the next day. The introduction of this nighttime recharge
adjustment can be identified in the negative values of power
established in the Pgrid shown in Fig. 4(a). Similarly, its effect
over the SOC can be appreciated in Fig. 4(b), which shows the
ESS energy reserve evolution for those same days. Note how
the SOC level hardly recovers the reference SOC value [50%
of the battery capacity, i.e., 2150 Wh in Fig. 4(b)] every night.
Therefore, this SOC evolution shows how the plant is operated
during a ten-day period while oscillating every day around the
SOCref of the ESS. In this way, the tripping or saturation of the
ESS due to energy deviations on consecutive days is avoided.
BELTRAN et al.: EVALUATION OF STORAGE ENERGY REQUIREMENTS FOR PRODUCTION IN PV POWER PLANTS
TABLE I
P ERCENTAGE OF T IME A LONG THE Y EAR W HEN THE PV P OWER P LANT C ANNOT T RACK THE Pgrid OF THE D IFFERENT
EMS C ONFIGURATIONS AS A F UNCTION OF THE UC E NERGY C APACITY
Finally, it must be highlighted that different techniques can
be implemented in order to approach accurately the daily
energy adjustment introduced on the Pgrid . These techniques
consist mainly in the following complementary strategies:
1) incorporating weather forecasting data from Doppler
radar systems, combined with an online surveillance of
the real PV power generation throughout the day, and the
corresponding analysis of the expected production trend;
2) implementing a predictive controller which could ulti-
mately adjust the reference during the last active hours
of the plant if the weather forecast was not reliable.
The three EMS configurations, including the daily energy
adjustment and the night-hour SOC level recovery adjustment,
have been analyzed in the following.
IV. ESS S IZING A NALYSIS
This section presents the results obtained for the ESS sizing
optimization introduced in Section III. This process compre-
hends an annual evaluation of the ESS ratings needed to operate
the PV+ES power plant properly without system saturations
under the different EMS configurations.
To that end, a set of simulations was carried out using a
Matlab model that incorporates real system limitations. More-
over, to increase the reliability of the analysis, real solar radi-
ation data sampled every 120 s throughout the year 2009 in a
location in southern Spain were used as input for the PV power
plant model. The resulting PV production was systematically
compared with the different power references defined for the
PV+ES power plant by each of the EMS configurations. In this
way, the instantaneous ESS power requirements, taking into
account a round-trip efficiency of 90%, were established, and
its SOC evolution was calculated. The analysis of this SOC
evolution makes it possible to define when the ESS is saturated
during the year. These periods represent the amount of time that
the PV+ES power plant could not track the reference and lost
control of power production.
The results for the different operation strategies are com-
piled in Table I. This table contains the percentage of time
throughout the whole of 2009 (percentage of sampling periods)
in which an ESS with the energy capacity indicated for each
column would not be able to guarantee tracking of the PV+ES
1229
power reference (due to saturations of the ESS related to a
completely charged or discharged state), according to the EMS
configuration defined for the corresponding line in the table.
Altogether, eight different-length 1SCPS configurations, one
4LCPS configuration, and the HCPS configuration were consid-
ered. For each of them, the performance of the plant with seven
different ESS energy capacity values (from 0.2 to 0.5 p.u.)
is represented. Although the sizing analysis is intended to give
an idea of the ES requirements for large-scale PV power plants
(in the range of megawatts), note that the ESS energy capacity
values introduced in the table are defined in the per-unit system,
which unlinks the sizing from the power plant scale. The energy
base value, which was taken to be the same for all the per-
unit calculations, is the daily energy that the PV power plant
would produce, per kilowatt installed, in a given location. This
is a well-known value in the PV industry, called the PV plant
capacity factor (Cf ), and it represents the annually averaged
number of equivalent hours that the PV plant can generate
its rated power every day. Cf equals 4.3 kWh/kWpeak for
the location where the sizing analysis was carried out. Thus,
0.5 p.u. represents, for example, an energy capacity equal to
2.15 kWh for each rated kilowatt of PV panels installed.
When comparing the results shown in Table I for the differ-
ent EMS configurations, several conclusions about the sizing
requirements can be automatically extracted. These are sum-
marized as follows.
1) First, there is clear evidence that, among the 1SCPS
configurations, the minimal energy capacity requirements
are obtained for the 8-h 1SCPS reference configuration.
As the step durations deviate from this optimal one, the
ES capacity requirements increase. Note how, with the
same ESS energy capacity, e.g., 0.3 p.u., the PV+ES
power plant will manage to track an 8-h step reference
properly during 98.76% of the year, while it would only
do so during 88.75% of the year with a 12-h step Pgrid .
2) Moreover, when comparing different configurations, re-
sults for the 4LCPS are much better than those obtained
for any 1SCPS configuration.
3) The ESS energy capacity required is even lower for
the HCPS configuration. According to this, it could be
operated during 99.4% of the year without saturations
with an ESS of only 0.2 p.u. (860 kWh/MWpeak ). This
1230 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 60, NO. 3, MARCH 2013
Fig. 5. Structure of the test bench.
confirms the reduction in ESS capacity requirements that
can be achieved by evolving, within the constant-power-
step strategy, from using a one-single-step to a multiple-
constant-step Pgrid . Therefore, the trend in the operation
of this type of power plants should follow this hourly de-
fined reference EMS, which optimizes the possibility of
participating in the daily and intraday electricity markets
while minimizing the ES requirements and costs.
4) Finally, the results in Table I show how, although an-
alyzing an ideal situation where the daily real energy
production can be adjusted (an ideal weather forecast is
assumed, which allows for optimization of the reference
and, hence, the ESS operation and size), the levels of
ESS energy capacity required by any of the different
EMS configurations analyzed here still represent a large
economic investment and also show capacity levels that
are unaffordable for some ESS technologies.
V. E XPERIMENTAL VALIDATION
In order to experimentally corroborate the ESS operation
parameters (round-trip efficiency) and the system dynamic
response considered in the simulations presented earlier, a
test bench scaled to the kilowatt range was developed in the
laboratory. This section describes this test bench and introduces
the experimental results obtained with it.
A. Test Bench Description
The 2.5-kW scaled test bench emulates a PV power plant
supported by an ESS, with the capability to monitor the dif-
ferent power fluxes and operating voltages of the system. Its
overall structure is shown in Fig. 5.
A further description of the components, whose appearance
is shown in Fig. 6, is provided in the following.
1) The PV plant emulator: It consists mainly of a 2.5-kW
rated power unit made up of a unidirectional full-bridge
dc/dc converter with zero-voltage-switching modulation
[36] and a single-phase dc/ac inverter with unipolar mod-
ulation. This converter is controlled by a digital signal
processor (TMS320F2808PZA) and is fed from a 12-kW
dc source (60 V/200 A). Both operate together as a
programmable ac source. Thus, the emulator can repro-
duce any ac power evolution supplied to its control unit
as Pgrid . It has proven to be useful in reproducing the
Fig. 6. Setup of the PV power plant test bench with UC as ESS.
TABLE II
UC M ODULE E LECTRICAL S PECIFICATIONS
different daily PV curves, emulating perfectly well both
clear and cloudy patterns, with its rated power being the
sole limitation. It can be observed on the top left-hand
side of the bench in Fig. 6.
2) The ES unit: A UC-based ESS was used in the test bench.
The Boostcap UC module “BMOD0063 P125.B03” from
Maxwell Technologies was integrated due to its power
and energy capacity ratings, as well as its voltage opera-
tion level, described in Table II. This UC tank can be seen
on the floor toward the back in Fig. 6.
3) The ES connection converter: This is a 7-kW rated
power unit with two power stages: a current-reversible
interleaved dc/dc boost converter (six channels) oper-
ating in discontinuous mode and a single-phase dc/ac
inverter with unipolar modulation. This converter is
controlled by a floating-point digital signal processor
(TMS320C6701GJCA). It manages the exchange of
power of the UC tank so as to ensure that the overall
PV+UC production complies with the Pgrid . This con-
verter can also be observed in Fig. 6 on the top right-hand
side of the bench.
4) Measurement equipment: Several voltmeters, one oscil-
loscope, and one power analyzer were installed in order
to allow the control system and the user to supervise
the experiment and register the results. Some of these
components are also highlighted in Fig. 6.
B. Experimental Results
Different experiments were run in order to check the capabil-
ity of the system to track the Pgrid defined by the EMS under
clear and cloudy day conditions and also to validate the round-
trip efficiency of the system.
The various tests represented in Figs. 7–10 show daily-
power evolutions with different scaling durations. Three are the
BELTRAN et al.: EVALUATION OF STORAGE ENERGY REQUIREMENTS FOR PRODUCTION IN PV POWER PLANTS
Fig. 7. Results for (a) a 6- and (b) a 10-h 1SCPS for a sunny day.
Fig. 8. Results for a 4LCPS configuration for a sunny day.
Fig. 9. Results for an 8-h 1SCPS configuration for a cloudy day.
reasons for it: to reduce the time required by the experiments
(ideally 24-h tests), to analyze the round-trip efficiency for
various durations, and to comparatively enlarge the energy
capacity of the UC tank. Thus, note how, by scaling the test
time, the energy capacity required by the ESS to allow the
PV+UC plant to track the Pgrid satisfactorily is proportionately
reduced, e.g., a 100-Wh energy capacity (rated value of the
UC tank implemented here) is proportionately enlarged to an
equivalent 6 kWh if hours are converted to minutes in the
accelerated test time (a scale factor equal to 60).
1231
Fig. 10. Results for a 4LCPS configuration for a cloudy day.
The first test in Fig. 7(a) and (b) is the daily evolution of the
powers experienced for a 6- and a 10-h 1SCPS configuration,
respectively. Note how the Pgrid is tracked by the system with a
high degree of accuracy, standing out how only at those points
where the UC power is close to zero can some slight tracking
error be identified. This phenomenon is due to the internal
functioning of the ES connection converter with which it is
quite complex to exchange low levels of current because there
is a single regulator for the six channels due to the interleaved
boost configuration operating in discontinuous mode.
Therefore, a power security band is introduced on its input
power reference, which continuously prevents it from reversing
its operation, causing a certain distortion in the tracking. Taking
this limitation into account, it can be concluded from Fig. 7
that the 1SCPS configuration can be effectively executed on the
test bench for clear days, when the shape of the PV production
is regular, and with a UC energy capacity which has been
adequately adapted (test-time scaling). The single power step is
properly reproduced in both cases achieving the expected power
level and the exact duration of the step defined by the EMS.
The 4LCPS configuration was also tested on a clear day
(Fig. 8). The measured experimental results demonstrate that
this configuration also operates effectively on a real system,
with the characteristic power pattern with four different levels
of power being very well reproduced. Also, note that tracking
problems are, again, observed every time the ES converter has
to exchange low power values, which is more frequent for this
configuration because the Pgrid and the PV power cross each
other many times.
Moreover, the same two EMS configurations were tested on
cloudy days. Fig. 9 shows the 8-h-long 1SCPS case, while
Fig. 10 resumes the 4LCPS case. The test results for these
weather conditions show greater distortion due to the tracking
limitation previously described. However, the general evolution
of the powers proves the functioning of the system under both
configurations also for cloudy days.
Therefore, although the topology of the ES connection con-
verter should be modified, taking ideas from recent works such
as [37] and [38], and also a more frequent reference update
would be desirable to allow for a reduction in the programmed
security power bands, the experiments presented here con-
firm the technical viability to operate the EMS proposed in
Section III. Furthermore, the experimental results validate the
sizing analysis presented in Section IV, because the round-trip
efficiency of the ESS, measured in the different tests with
varying durations, approaches the value of 90% introduced in
1232 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 60, NO. 3, MARCH 2013
the annual simulations performed for that sizing analysis. Also,
the different time scaling that has been required to perform the
experimental results confirms that, the higher the number of
power steps is, the smaller the ESS capacity ratings will be.
In this regard, not only the energy capacity is larger but also, in
terms of rated power, the requirements are larger for the 1SCPS
configuration than for the 4LCPS or the HCPS configuration.
This is appreciated when comparing the ESS power evolutions
in Figs. 7(a) or (b) and 8, where important differences in the
maximum ESS power values can be found.
Finally, these experiments can also be used to extract differ-
ent conclusions regarding the performance of UC when used in
PV power plants. First, the time response of the UC technology
is fast enough to respond to the PV power fluctuations pro-
duced by passing clouds, and hence, this ES technology does
not present limitations in this sense. Moreover, the UC self-
discharge ratio was found to be acceptable for short-term exper-
iments, although an extended analysis should be introduced in
order to account for it in longer experiments. Finally, conclude
that, although UC operational characteristics seem appropriate
for these PV applications, the current commercial UC models
are still too limited in their capacity ratings to be seriously
considered as candidates for large ES applications.
VI. R ESULTS D ISCUSSION
It can be easily concluded from both simulations and exper-
imental results that the HCPS configuration is the one which
demands the lowest ES energy capacity to operate the PV power
plant in a controlled way with a production that is constant over
periods. In this sense, taking into account the fact that the analy-
sis presented in this paper was performed under ideal conditions
(meaning that the real daily PV production can be anticipated
perfectly), ES energy capacities of around 860 kWh/MWpeak
would be required to track the HCPS programmed reference
with an annual confidence level higher than 98%, according to
the results represented in Table I. On the other hand, energy
capacities of around 950 and 1250 kWh/MWpeak would be
required to track the corresponding power references with the
same confidence level for the 4LCPS and the 1SCPS configura-
tions, respectively. Knowing that PV installation costs stand at
around 4000 C/kW nowadays and that some ESSs are around
500 C/kWh, as is the case of the Li-ion batteries implemented in
new prototypes of electric vehicles, the introduction of this type
of batteries into large-scale PV plants would represent an extra
investment of around 11%. This gives an idea of the extra cost
of a PV power plant due to the introduction of an ES to operate
the plant in an optimal constant-production way. In order to be
economically viable, this extra cost would have to be offset by
the extra revenues that the PV+ES power plant should obtain
owing to the introduction of an ESS. The first way to increase
the revenue is to perform good energy production trading on
the electricity markets by taking advantage of the structure of
feed-in tariffs offered nowadays to renewable energy suppliers
in most of the countries where these technologies are being
installed on a large scale. A clear example to follow in this
sense is the wind-power industry. On the one hand, wind
turbines can receive feed-in tariffs; on the other hand, they can
participate on the electricity market and receive a complement
to the market electricity price in the form of a premium. Where
this is the case, all wind-power producers choose the second
option, which historically provides higher revenues. PV plants
with storage will also have this possibility open to them if
legislation is adapted. The second way to increase the revenue
of the PV+ES plants is also related with a regulatory change. If
system operators and politicians want to foster a further degree
of penetration of PV plants, changes in the energy policies and
feed-in tariffs should be introduced so that PV plants can benefit
from their capability to provide a controlled constant power
production. These increased feed-in tariffs could be financed
by the reduction in the economic needs to pay the primary
and secondary reserve providers, given that the number of
generators offering these ancillary services could be reduced
if PV was more controllable. Thus, both types of regulatory
changes (permission to access the markets and increase in the
feed-in tariffs for controllable PV plants) are something that, in
the authors’ opinion, cannot be considered unreasonable.
VII. C ONCLUSION
This paper has described how constant-production periods
can be achieved in grid-tied PV power plants, regardless of the
current and local weather conditions by introducing an ESS,
focusing on the ES energy capacity ratings required to operate
the PV+ES power plant in such a way. Therefore, this paper
has estimated how ES can help to improve the operability
and production predictability of PV power plants and what
is the size of the ESS needed to achieve that improvement.
This upgrading will foster a further PV integration within the
grid and will facilitate the possible participation of this type of
currently intermittent RES in the electricity markets.
After introducing an overview of the previous work on ES
installations implemented within PV power plants, a new EMS
to control these hybrid plants has been proposed. The aim of
this EMS is to make PV+ES production constant over periods
by adapting the power steps to the standard monthly averaged
PV power patterns defined for a certain location while minimiz-
ing the SOC deviation with regard to a SOC reference value.
Different configurations of this constant-power-step EMS have
been defined, with a varying number of power steps per day.
Their performance has been analyzed on an annual basis so that
their corresponding ES energy capacity requirements can be set.
Finally, experimental results have been introduced to support
the technical viability of the proposal and the validity of the
findings.
Therefore, although the different constant-production config-
urations have proven to be technically viable, it is still difficult
to offset the increase in cost associated to the introduction of
an ES by the extra revenues obtained from participation in
the electric pool. However, future changes in energy policies
to support the introduction of RES with extended capabilities,
which cooperate with grid control and operation, can also
easily pave the way to the economic viability of these PV+ES
plants controlled by means of an EMS such as the HCPS
configuration.
BELTRAN et al.: EVALUATION OF STORAGE ENERGY REQUIREMENTS FOR PRODUCTION IN PV POWER PLANTS 1233

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1234 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 60, NO. 3, MARCH 2013

Endika Bilbao received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. de-
grees in electronics from Mondragón Unibertsitatea,
Mondragón, Spain, in 2005 and 2008, respectively.
He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree
in the IK4-IKERLAN Technology Research Cen-
ter, Mondragón, in collaboration with the Industrial
Electronics Laboratory (LEI), Swiss Federal Insti-
tute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne,
Switzerland.
His research interests include energy manage-
ment and storage, renewables, and power electronic
applications.
Enrique Belenguer (M’05) received the M.Sc. and
Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the
Technical University of Valencia (UPV), Valencia,
Spain, in 1992 and 1997, respectively.
He is currently a Professor of electrical engineer-
ing with the Universitat Jaume I, Castelló de la Plana,
Spain, where he is also the Director of the BP Chair
of Energy Efficiency. His research areas are power
system analysis, electrical machines, power quality,
and grid integration of renewable energy systems.
Pedro Rodriguez (S’99–M’04–SM’10) received the
B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Uni-
versity of Granada, Granada, Spain, in 1989, and
the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering
from the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC),
Barcelona, Spain, in 1994 and 2004, respectively.
In 1990, he joined the faculty of UPC as an Assis-
tant Professor, where he became an Associate Pro-
fessor in 1993. He was a Researcher with the Center
for Power Electronics Systems, Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University, Blacksburg, and the
Institute of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark, in 2005
and 2006, respectively. He is currently the Head of the Renewable Electrical
Energy Systems Research Group, Electrical Engineering Department, UPC. He
has coauthored more than 100 papers in technical journals and conferences. He
is the holder of five patents. He has co-organized special sessions in several
IEEE conferences on power electronics applied to renewable energies. His
research interests include integration of distributed energy systems, power
conditioning, and control of power converters.
Dr. Rodriguez is a member of the IEEE Power Electronics Society, the
IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IES), and the IEEE Industry Applications
Society and a member of the IEEE IES Technical Committee on Renewable
Energy Systems. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON
P OWER E LECTRONICS and the Committee Chair of the IEEE IES Gold and
Student Activities.

Ion Etxeberria-Otadui (M’04–SM’12) received the

B.Sc. degree in electronics from Mondragón Unib-
ertsitatea, Mondragón, Spain, in 1997, and the M.Sc.
and Ph.D. degrees from the Grenoble Institute of
Technology, Grenoble, France, in 1999 and 2003,
respectively.
From 2003 to 2005, he was the Head of the Power
Systems Area, CIDAE Research Center, Mondragón.
Since 2005, he has been a Researcher with the
IK4-IKERLAN Technology Research Center,
Mondragón, where he has been the Head of the
Control Engineering and Power Electronics Area since 2008. His research
interests include the application of power electronic devices to distribution
networks, electrical traction, and energy-storage applications.