PROJECT TITLE :

Solar Power Shaping: An Analytical Approach

ABSTRACT:

The focus of our work is the employment of an energy storage system (ESS) to integrate solar energy generators into the electrical grid. Though, in theory, an ESS allows intermittent solar power to be shaped to meet any desired load profile, in observe, parsimonious ESS dimensioning is challenging thanks to the stochastic nature of generation and load and the variety and high cost of storage technologies. Existing strategies for ESS sizing are based either on simulation or on analysis, both of which have shortcomings. Simulation methods are computationally expensive and rely on the availability of in depth data traces. Existing analytical methods tend to be conservative, overestimating expensive storage needs. Our key insight is that solar power fluctuations arise at a few distinct time scales. We have a tendency to separately model fluctuations in each time scale, which permits us to accurately estimate ESS performance and efficiently size an ESS. Numerical examples with real data traces show that our model and analysis are tight.