Dr. Simpkins To Present At The Colorado Renewable Energy Society

Dr. Simpkins will be presenting at the Boulder chapter of the Colorado Renewable Energy Society on June 13, 2018, at 6:30 PM. The topic of the talk will be Optimizing Battery Sizing and Dispatching To Maximize Economic Return. 

The installation of battery energy storage in behind-the-meter applications is poised for exponential growth over the next few years. Batteries can be combined with renewables such as solar or wind and conventional diesel generation to form grid-connected microgrids meaning that these assets can operate for economic benefit when the grid is functional and then provide resiliency during grid outages. The key to making such hybrid systems economically viable is to stack revenue from multiple applications, such as peak demand charge reduction, energy arbitrage, providing ancillary services to the grid, and participating in demand response programs, among others. The added resiliency that these systems offer can then be obtained essentially for free.

In this talk, we’ll show how we use our mathematical optimization model to optimally size hybrid systems to maximize the economic return from these various values steams. We’ll show graphical examples of how the optimal battery dispatch strategy changes from hour-to-hour and month-to-month in response to changes in the electrical load profile, electricity prices, and market conditions. Then we’ll demonstrate how we perform stochastic simulations to quantify the added resiliency that these systems can bring when the grid collapses and these systems are islanded.

The talk will take place in the auditorium of the University of Colorado Sustainability, Energy, and Environment Complex (SEEC). You can sign up here. See you there!