Impacts of Price-led Operation of Residential Storage on Distribution Networks: An Australian Case Study

The popularity of residential solar PV systems in Australia has paved the way for the growing adoption of battery energy storage (BES) systems. To bring even more benefits to customers, Australian companies are developing control schemes for residential BES systems to also respond to price signals. However, depending on the time at which a high price signal is provided, the resulting power injection from the BES system can he coincident with that of the solar PV. If unrestricted, this combined injection could exacerbate reverse power flows and the associated effects, potentially posing a risk to the operation of the electricity infrastructure. Using an optimization-based price-led control scheme, this paper demonstrates probabilistically the impacts that such BES operation might have on a real Australian MV-LV network with 4,626 residential customers. Findings highlight the need for the electricity sector to adopt appropriate measures to prevent such issues from emerging in the future.