Battery Energy Storage Systems Applications and Deployment in Dense Urban Areas

Energy Storage has emerged as an important focus of the U.S. federal government, which has established the goal of developing global leadership in energy storage and has a near-term focus on strengthening the supply chain, manufacturing, and funding streams available to achieve the overarching objectives. At the state level, similar efforts are underway in which policy objectives have set aggressive targets around energy storage deployment. New York State, through its landmark climate act “CLCPA” and subsequent Energy Storage roadmap 2.0, has set one of the most aggressive goals in the Country targeting 6,000MW of energy storage by 2030. While much of the accelerated growth is anticipated to occur in the front-of-the-meter (FTM) market segment, only a small amount of projects has been deployed to date. In addition, given the volatility with in-queue projects, it is estimated that an increase of 1450% of storage projects is need in downstate NY to meet state target [1]. Because of this, an all-hands approach is needed to reach these goals. This brings us to the focus this dissertation, which addresses the complexities and gaps associated with deploying this nascent technology in dense urban area such as New York City (downstate NY). In this dissertation, we will address techno-economic barriers to energy storage deployment as it relates to available space, challenges with developing brownfield properties, risks and uncertainty around permitting approval by identifying “adders” for downstate New York. We will discuss dual participation from the perspective of grid support and wholesale market participation, value stacking of “use cases” to capitalize on smart inverter functionality (while maintaining asset life) and overcoming interconnection hurdles with new cost-effective first of a kind DC system design for pairing DERs. It is anticipated that these results will fill the gap that currently limits the deployment of energy storage in dense urban areas. This will be achieved through a proposal for a new interconnection scheme that will be applicable to community DG and Microgrids, recommendation on how to maximize inverter-based systems for VARs support, and suggestion for streamlining the approval process in NYC