Impacts of Energy Tariff Structures in Home Battery Energy Storage System Controls on Low-Voltage Grids

To cope with the increasing volatility in electrical energy systems due to distributed resources, flexibilities such as home battery energy storage systems (BESS) are gaining interest. Intelligent controls of home BESS often target a maximum self-consumption of photovoltaic power or the minimization of the electricity bill with cost-driven decisions. However, the influence of increasing numbers of intelligently controlled home BESS on distribution grids are still ambiguous. Therefore, this paper assesses the impacts of different BESS controls on low-voltage grids with a specific attention given to the influence of tariff structures for purchase and sale rates. BESS controls are generated using a combination of mixed-integer programming and decision trees in a training/testing manner. The impacts of different control strategies under several tariff structures are assessed using a grid simulation and a load flow calculation of a distribution grid with a high share of renewables and BESS. The results show that controls based on dynamic purchase tariffs using real-time pricing can cause reverse power flows and significantly high voltages, while dynamic sale tariffs do not indicate severe negative effects on low-voltage grids.