A quadratic convex approximation for optimal operation of battery energy storage systems in DC distribution networks

This paper proposes a quadratic convex model for optimal operation of battery energy storage systems in a direct current (DC) network that approximates the original nonlinear non-convex one. The proposed quadratic convex model uses Taylor’s series expansion to transform the product between voltage variables in the power balance equations into a linear combination of them. Numerical simulations in the general algebraic modeling system (GAMS) for both models show small diferences in the daily energy losses, which are lower than 3.00%. The main advantage of the proposed quadratic model is that its optimal solution is achievable with interior point methods guaranteeing its uniqueness (convexity properties of the solution space and objective function), which is not possible to guarantee with the exact nonlinear non-convex model. The 30-bus DC test feeder with four distributed generators (with power generation forecast via artifcial neural networks with errors lower than 1% between real and predicted generation curves) and three batteries is used to validate the proposed convex and exact models. Numerical results obtained by GAMS show the efectiveness of the proposed quadratic convex model for diferent simulation scenarios tested, which was confrmed by the CVX tool for convex optimization in MATLAB