How Load Simultaneity Affects Sizing and Layout of Batteries Used to Prevent Grid Overloading

Electrification of residential areas is increasingly common. Major areas of development include promoting rooftop solar panels, electric vehicles and heat pumps. However, existing grid components may have insufficient capacity to support the resulting electricity flows. Battery energy storage (BES) can be used to prevent transformer overloading resulting from electrification. Ideally, BES should be sized and placed such that it can prevent overloading with a minimum amount of storage capacity, but it is unclear how load characteristics affect BES capacity requirements. This study investigated how load simultaneity affects the minimum BES capacity required to prevent transformer overloading, comparing a central with a decentral BES configuration. It was found that as simultaneity increases, decentral storage requires relatively less capacity than central storage. This is likely due to the reduced ability of central BES to share capacity between connections with higher simultaneity, and the ability of decentral BES to better reduce transportation losses.