Distributed ESS Capacity Decision for Home Appliances and Economic Analysis

The imbalance between the supply and demand of electricity is becoming expansive due to the increase in renewable energy penetration. Consequently, the time-varying electricity price is proposed as a tool to manage the mismatch. To cope with the electricity price difference across time and to extract the benefit to the limit, an energy storage system (ESS) can be a good tool to smooth out electricity usage. Nevertheless, ESS can be expensive due to the high installation cost and centrally managed system. In this paper, we propose a distributed ESS installed in each home appliance. Separately installed batteries can avoid sizeable initial investment costs. We calculated the benefit of the system that mainly stemmed from the electricity price difference and compared the benefits across various sizes of the battery system. In addition, the charging/discharging schedule depends on the power consumption profile and electricity price distribution. Decreasing battery prices and rising electricity price volatility can increase the system’s potential benefit.