Grid-scale BESS for ancillary services provision: SoC restoration strategies

The future power system, characterized by lower inertia, reduced programmability and more distributed architecture, will depend on prompt and reliable control systems. Quick ancillary services provided by battery energy storage systems (BESS) could be a resource in order to deliver fast and precise response to frequency events. Degrees of freedom in the design of innovative products traded on ancillary services markets give the asset manager room for developing state-of-charge (SoC) restoration mechanisms. These are necessary to effectively exploit BESS as key resources for electricity balancing. This study compares the main SoC restoration strategies. It aims to define which ones are suitable for guaranteeing the reliability of the provision and the return on the investment. A robust regulatory framework analysis describes the degrees of freedom guaranteed by the main experiences around Europe. In this paper, a BESS model with variable efficiency is used to compare the provision of Frequency Containment Reserve (FCR) with different SoC restoration strategies exploiting one or more degrees of freedom. Here, we show that the degrees of freedom are key to the reliability of provision. Among most diffused mechanisms, dead-band strategies secure the desired consistency, but require large energy flows for SoC management. Thus, BESS life and economics decrease. The strategies based on minimum available energy guarantee assured reliability while being fair with BESS life and operation costs.