Are ancillary services saturated for battery energy storage systems?

This is known as ‘saturation’. This makes Ancillary Services much less valuable, and forces battery operators to seek out alternative revenue streams. So, when are ERCOT’s Ancillary Services likely to be saturated for battery energy storage systems?

What are ancillary services?

The review is divided into short-term and long-term ancillary services. The short-term ancillary services for future distribution grids are reviewed for voltage control, frequency regulation, and black start. Long-term ancillary services are for congestion management, peak shaving, and power smoothing.

What are long-term ancillary services?

The long-term ancillary services are reviewed for peak shaving, congestion relief, and power smoothing. Reviewing short-term ancillary services provides renewable energy operators and researchers with a vast range of recent BESS-based methodologies for fast response services to distribution grids.

Why are ancillary services better than energy arbitrage?

This is largely because: Ancillary Services provide a stable, secure revenue stream - relative to Energy arbitrage. Reserve Ancillary Service products tend to require lower cycling rates than Energy arbitrage. Battery energy storage systems are particularly well-suited to provide Ancillary Services - due to their near-instantaneous ramp rates.

What are battery energy storage systems?

Fig. 1. Grid Levels Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs) are an important enabler for the integration of PV installations on prosumer scale. BESSs increase flexibility in balancing supply and demand but can also increase flexibility, safety, reliability and quality of distribution grids by performing ancillary services , , .

Do ancillary services improve the efficiency of transmission and distribution grids?

BESS in transmission and distribution grids are operated over a long period for ancillary support to improve the system’s efficiency and reduce the costs of producing and delivering electricity Mexis and Todeschini (2020). Congestion relief, peak shaving, and power smoothing are reviewed for long-term ancillary services in this paper.