The Value of Energy Storage in Facilitating Renewables: A Northeast Area Analysis

Abstract

The cross-regional and large-scale transmission of new energy power is an inevitable requirement to address the counter-distributed characteristics of wind and solar resources and load centers, as well as to achieve carbon neutrality. However, the inherent stochastic, intermittent, and fluctuating nature of wind and solar power poses challenges for the stable bundled dispatch of new energy. Leveraging the regulation flexibility of energy storage offers a potential solution to mitigate new energy fluctuations, enhance the flexibility of the hybrid energy systems, and promote bundled dispatch of new energy for external transmission. This paper takes energy storage as an example and proposes a capacity configuration optimization method for a hybrid energy system. The system is composed of wind power, solar power, and energy storage, denoted by the wind–solar–energy storage hybrid energy systems. The objective is to quantify the support provided by energy storage to bundled dispatch of new energy, namely determining the new energy transmission capacity that can be sustained per unit of energy storage. The results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively improves the bundled dispatch capacity of new energy. Moreover, the obtained configuration results can be tailored based on different wind–solar ratios, allowable fluctuation rates, and transmission channel capacities, rendering the approach highly valuable for engineering practicality.