Cost-Benefit Analysis of Battery Energy Storage in Electric Power Grids: Research and Practices

This paper provides an overview of methods for including Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) into electric power grid planning. The general approach to grid planning is the same with and without BESS, but when BESS is included as an alternative, other methods are necessary, which adds significant complexity to the planning problem. Although recent research literature proposes a wide range of methods and models for Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) of BESS for grid applications, these are to a little extent applied in practice. For the research-based methods to be suitable for grid planning, they should handle timing of installations as well as sizing and siting of BESS. Moreover, they must capture long-term developments in load and generation. Finally, the CBA methods need realistic modelling of the operational benefits of BESS, taking into account multi-period AC power flow, battery degradation, and utilization for multiple grid services.