IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - September/October 2017 - 91

Golden
Substation

25-kV
Feeder
57 km

3,000
Recloser

3 km

Field

2010-2013 Average
2014
2015

2,500

500
Mar.

Feb.

Jan.

Dec.

Nov.

Oct.

Aug.

Sept.

0
July

NaS Battery
6.5 MWh, 1 MW

1,000

June

BC Hydro
SCADA

C-Band
Satellite

PCS
1,000 kW,
750 kVAR

1,500

Apr.
May

900-MHz
Speed Net Radio

(h)

2,000
25 kV-480 V
1,500 kVA

figure 9. The Field BESS configurations and telecommunications.

figure 10. The CHL in Field before and after BESS installation.

satellite, while the short-haul communication between the is--
landing recloser and the BESS site was provided by a 900-MHz
Speed Net radio (see Figure 9).
Operational since July 2013, the BESS installation has
been actively used in both peak shaving and grid-forming
applications. The system injects power in parallel to the
main feeder every day from 4:00 to 8:00 P.M. to supply a
part of the community's electricity demand, thus performing
peak shaving. Afterward, the system charges at 750 kW for
an hour, or until the battery state of charge is 100%. Since
July 2013, there have been 22 outages, during which the
BESS installation has provided 120 h of backup power to the
town of Field. As a result, more than 15,000 customer hours
lost (CHL) have been avoided by BESS; Figure 10 shows the
CHL before and after the BESS installation. Among these
outages, the longest lasted 24 h, resulting in complete discharge of the BESS. The occasions when the BESS could
not provide backup power were either due to loss of C-band
satellite communication or to a fault between the BESS and
the town of Field.

A. H. Hajimiragha and M. R. D. Zadeh, "Research and
development of a microgrid control and monitoring system
for the remote community of Bella Coola: Challenges, solutions, achievements and lessons learned," in Proc. IEEE Int.
Conf. Smart Energy Grid Engineering, Aug. 2012, pp. 1-6.
BC Hydro. (2011. Mar.). Energy storage and demand response for improved reliability in an outage-prone community. Project Outreach Rep., Vancouver, BC, Canada. [Online].
Available: https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/
customer-portal/documents/projects/energy-in-bc/bch-energystorage-project-outreach-report.pdf
S. Wong, G. Gaudet, A. Prieur, and L. P. Proulx, "Wind
integration using thermal storage-Real-world findings from
Summerside, PEI," poster, Natural Resources Canada, QC,
Canada, 2016.
L. Zanasi, J.-P. Pinard, J. Hicklin, and J. Maissan. (2014).
Initial economic analysis of electric thermal storage in the
Yukon. Dept. Energy, Energy Solution Centre, Whitehorse,
YT, Canada. [Online]. Available: http://www.energy.gov
.yk.ca/pdf/ets_report_mar_2014__phase_draft.pdf

Acknowledgments

Biographies

We thank Dr. Mariano Arriaga, Dr. Amir Hajimiragha,
Dr. Steven Wong, the BC Hydro team, and Greg Gaudet
for sharing some of the data and information presented in
this article.

Mostafa Farrokhabadi is with the University of Waterloo,
Canada.
Bharatkumar V. Solanki is with the University of Waterloo, Canada.
Claudio A. Cañizares is with the University of Waterloo,
Canada.
Kankar Bhattacharya is with the University of Waterloo, Canada.
Sebastian König is with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.
Patrick S. Sauter is with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.
Thomas Leibfried is with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.
Sören Hohmann is with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.
p&e

For Further Reading
International Electrotechnical Commission. (2011, Dec.).
Electrical energy storage. White Paper. [Online]. Available:
http://www.iec.ch/whitepaper/energystorage/
F. Diaz-Gonzales, A. Sumper, O. Gomis-Bellmunt, and
R. Villafafila-Robles, "A review of energy storage technologies for wind power applications," Renew. Sustainable Energy Rev., vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 2154-2171, May 2012.
M. Arriaga, C. Canizares, and M. Kazerani, "Renewable
energy alternatives for remote communities in Northern Ontario, Canada," IEEE Trans. Sustainable Energy, vol. 4, no. 3,
pp. 661-667, July 2013.
september/october 2017

ieee power & energy magazine

https://www.bchydro.com/content/dam/BCHydro/ http://www.energy.gov http://www.yk.ca/pdf/ets_report_mar_2014__phase_draft.pdf http://www.iec.ch/whitepaper/energystorage/

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