Distribution System Planning with Battery Storage using Multiperiod Optimal Power Flow

The ongoing energy transition introduces new challenges for distribution networks and brings about the need to expand existing power grid capacities. In order to contain network expansion and with it economic costs, utilization of various flexibility options to reduce expansion needs is discussed. This paper proposes a multiperiod optimal power flow (MPOPF) approach with a new continuous network expansion formulation to optimize the deployment of flexibility options under the objective of minimizing network expansion costs. In a comparison of the newly proposed continuous network expansion formulation with an existing mixed integer formulation and a continuous interpretation of the latter the here proposed formulation is shown to be useful in order to obtain a solvable problem and contain computational efforts. The presented MPOPF including the flexibility options storage units and curtailment is then assessed on synthetic medium voltage grids and applied to evaluate the benefit of a combined vs. a stepwise optimization of these flexibility options. It is demonstrated that using a local solver the proposed approach is applicable and yields a solution in reasonable time. Furthermore, it is shown that the combined optimization generally leads to a more efficient utilization of the considered flexibility options and therefore lower grid expansion costs than the stepwise consideration.