Battery Placement on Performance of VAR Controls

Battery’s role in the development of smart grid is gaining greater attention as an energy storage device that can be integrated with a Photovoltaic (PV) cell in the distribution circuit. As more PVs are connected to the system, real power injection to the distribution can cause fluctuation in the voltage. Due to the rapid fluctuation of the voltage, a more advanced volt-ampere reactive (VAR) power control scheme on a fast time scale is used to minimize the voltage deviation on the distribution. Employing both global and local dynamic VAR control schemes in our previous work, we show the effects of battery placement on the performance of VAR controls in the example of a single branch radial distribution circuit. Simulations verify that having battery placement at the rear in the distribution circuit can provide smaller voltage variations and higher energy savings than front battery placement when used with dynamic VAR control algorithms.