Flexibility enhancement of renewable-penetrated power systems coordinating energy storage deployment and deep peak regulation of thermal generators

Higher proportions of renewable energy are one of the most prominent features of future power systems. However, renewable energy, such as wind and PV power generation, is subject to inherent variability and uncertainty, which leads to fluctuations in electrical production and necessities flexibility enhancement to ensure sufficient adjustable resources responding to such fluctuations. This paper proposes to enhance the flexibility of renewable-penetrated power systems by coordinating energy storage deployment and deep peak regulation of existing thermal generators. First, the growing flexibility requirement in the presence of variable renewable energy is discussed and quantified using proposed indices. Then, we analyze the characteristics of thermal generators providing deep peak regulation, and establish a comprehensive operation cost function including coal consumption, wear-and-tear consumption, and oil consumption of thermal generators. On this basis, we propose a flexibility enhancement method coordinating battery energy storage capacity optimization and deep peak regulation of thermal generators, which aims at minimizing the total investment and operation costs while satisfying operating constraints on representative days. Extensive case studies on a modified IEEE-RST 24 system verified the proposed flexibility enhancement method under different scenarios.