Battery Energy Storage System usage in a Distribution Grid for PV exploitation: a Middle-East Case Study

Renewable Energy Sources (RES) can represent a great opportunity to increase energy independency in developing areas, also paving the way for the creation of new companies and new jobs and contributing to social growth. This is particularly true in the Middle East area, where the Photovoltaic (PV) generation offers the opportunity to exploit the huge amount of solar radiation available. However, a possible wide diffusion of PV distributed generation system into the grid must deal with the time mismatch between production and consumption. The introduction of Battery Energy Storage Systems like electrochemical batteries (BESS), could represent an efficient solution to optimise resource exploitation and locally increase self-consumption. Starting from the experience of the Renewable Energy for Palestine (RENEP) project, funded by the Palestinian Municipality Support Program (PMSP) of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, this paper shows how a BESS system can be used to raise the PV exploitation into the grid of Hebron city in Palestine where the power flux inversion at primary substation is strictly limited. The evaluation of the BESS impact is performed by means of a model of the distribution grid and an optimisation procedure called D-XEMS13 used to minimise the power losses in the grid through an approximated linear model. Results of the simulations were also compared to the ones obtained by NEPLAN simulator.