Locating Energy Storage Devices in Power Grids Using Evolutionary Algorithms

Abstract

The article presents the premises of the application for locating energy storage devices in the HV power grid. The substation number to which it is to be connected and the value of its power are defined as the storage location. The connected energy storage devices are designed to increase the total capacity of the connected renewable energy sources without compromising any technical constraints of the power grid. The location problem is defined as the process of optimisation with nonlinear constraints implemented in the MATLAB environment, using the application for calculating power distribution. In order to compare the locations with each other, a fixed sum of absolute values of the storage devices’ capacity was assumed. Evolutionary algorithms were used to implement the optimisation process. Due to the non-linearity of constraints, a new function of creating the initial population and eight genetic operators were designed. Most of the tests were carried out in two versions, with and without energy storage devices connected, after which the increase in the possibility of introducing additional generation in both variants was compared. Then, many tests were carried out to determine the parameters and select the algorithm version. Based on the results, an application for optimising the location of storage devices was created.