Projects:2018s1-140 Energy Storage Requirements for the SA Grid
Introduction
Project Title: 140 - Investigation of storage optimization strategies for the National Electricity Market, with emphasis on South Australia.
Team Members
- Julius Bullas
- Paul Citti
Supervisors
- Derek Abbott
- David Vowles
Advisors
- Holger Maier
- Angus Simpson
- Wen Soong
Abstract
SA obtains approximately 45% of its electrical energy from renewable sources – large scale wind and small scale solar PV. To reliably integrate these intermittent sources into the grid will increasingly require energy storage in a variety of forms such as pumped-hydro and batteries together with virtual energy storage in the form of demand side management. The storage requirement will progressively increase as controllable fossil fuel generation sources are withdrawn from the system. The objective of this project is to develop tools to assess the energy storage requirements to ensure reliable supply with high levels of intermittent generation. This project commenced in 2017 and the two honours students involved did a very fine job in achieving several early objectives. Much work remains to be done, including the following:
- (1) Serve the time-series data via the web so that it can be analysed and graphically displayed in various ways online.
- (2) Extend the data analysis and graphical display toolbox to allow the user to rapidly identify and display interesting features and periods within the data.
- (3) Extend the storage optimization approaches to consider alternative optimization objectives and future scenarios.
- (4) To estimate storage requirements for Australia as a whole assuming a hypothetical 100% renewable scenario and hypothetical interconnected Australia.
(There are a number of similarities but also critical differences with the water storage problem. In this aspect of the project we will draw on the considerable experience in Civil Engineering in the area of water network optimization.)
2018 Project
Today’s world faces challenges with the way energy is being made and produced. This stems from the increasing use of renewable energy sources, instigated by global action to climate change and decreasing manufacturing and installation costs. However, these benefits incur the issue of the intermittent nature of renewables which presents reliability and unserved energy concerns in the South Australian grid.
This thesis documents the energy storage requirements for the South Australian grid. The Initial Problem involves the development of a supply-demand balance model of the state, given a set amount of energy storage. It aims to minimise a cost function that matches to the maximum controllable generation, whilst ensuring 100% reliability for a set period. The tool developed could potentially be utilised to form retirement strategies for fossil fuelled generation as more renewables come online.
Genetic Algorithms will be used to optimise the Initial Problem. Previously been applied by the 2017 iteration of the project and to water distribution problems in the civil space, this technique incorporates the Darwinian concepts of natural selection and survival to the fittest. A simple genetic algorithm program has been developed on MATLAB which is to be later expanded and integrated into the initial problem.
