Peak Shaving Control Method for Energy Storage

Peak Shaving is one of the Energy Storage applications that has large potential to become important in the future’s smart grid. The goal of peak shaving is to avoid the installation of capacity to supply the peak load of highly variable loads. In cases where peak load coincide with electricity price peaks, peak shaving can also provide a reduction of energy cost. This paper addresses the challenge of utilizing a finite energy storage reserve for peak shaving in an optimal way. The owner of the Energy Storage System (ESS) would like to bring down the maximum peak load as low as possible but at the same time ensure that the ESS is not discharged too quickly (rendering in an undesired power peak). This paper proposes a method for calculation of an optimal shave level based on recorded historical load data. It uses optimization methods to calculate the shave levels for discrete days, or sub-days and statistical methods to provide an optimal shave level for the coming day(s).