Logistics Design for Mobile Battery Energy Storage Systems

Currently, there are three major barriers toward a greener energy landscape in the future: (a) Curtailed grid integration of energy from renewable sources like wind and solar; (b) The low investment attractiveness of large-scale battery energy storage systems; and, (c) Constraints from the existing electric infrastructure on the development of charging station networks to meet the increasing electrical transportation demands. A new conceptual design of mobile battery energy storage systems has been proposed in recent studies to reduce the curtailment of renewable energy while limiting the public costs of battery energy storage systems. This work designs a logistics system in which electric semi-trucks ship batteries between the battery energy storage system and electric vehicle charging stations, enabling the planning and operation of power grid independent electric vehicle charging station networks. This solution could be viable in many regions in the United States (e.g., Texas) where there are plenty of renewable resources and little congestion pressure on the road networks. With Corpus Christi, Texas and the neighboring Chapman Ranch wind farm as the test case, this work implement such a design and analyze its performance based on the simulation of its operational processes. Further, we formulate an optimization problem to find design parameters that minimize the total costs. The main design parameters include the number of trucks and batteries. The results in this work, although preliminary, will be instrumental for potential stakeholders to make investment or policy decisions.