Energy Storage and Regulation: An Analysis

Electric system operators rely on regulation services to match the total system supply to the total system load in quasi real-time. The regulation contractual framework requires that a regulation unit declares its regulation parameters at the beginning of the contract, the operator guarantees that the regulation signals will be within the range of these parameters, and the regulation unit is rewarded proportionally to what it declares and what it supplies. We study how this service can be provided by a unit with a non-ideal storage. We consider two broad classes of storage technologies characterized by different state of charge evolution equations, namely batteries and flywheels. We first focus on a single contract, and obtain formulas for the upward and downward regulation parameters that a unit with either a battery or a flywheel should declare to the operator to maximize its reward. We then focus on a multiple contract setting and show how to analytically quantify the reward that such a unit could obtain in successive contracts. We quantify this reward using bounds and expectation, and compare our analytical results with those obtained from a dataset of real-world regulation signals. Finally, we provide engineering insights by comparing different storage technologies in terms of potential rewards for different contract durations and parameters.