Small scale energy storage for power fluctuation minimization with spatially diverged PV plants

Large-scale energy storage for photovoltaic (PV) power application is expensive and one of the major concerns. This paper focuses on use of spatially diverged PV plants with small-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) for dispatching PV power to the grid. To achieve this, the output power of diversely located identical (having the same power rating) and small PV plants instead of a big PV plant in a certain area, is integrated. By doing that fluctuation of PV power is reduced considerably. Still there may be small power fluctuation and it may affect the power quality. This small power fluctuation is reduced by small energy storage device. This way the size of the energy storage can be reduced considerably. Practical irradiance data was measured and then PV power was estimated from these irradiance data. After the integration of the output power of diversely located PV plants in common point, still there may be small fluctuation. In order to remove this small fluctuation, a small capacity energy storage system is proposed. The energy storage needed for the diversely located PV system and the equivalent big plant in a particular area are investigated and compared to each other. Also, it is shown that the size of the energy storage required for the diversely located PV system is smaller than that for a big PV plant.