| Reactive power compensation technologies are being employed in electric power distribution systems to improve voltage support, transient stability and power oscillation damping. In this thesis, use of battery energy storage system in a power distribution network to supplement existing technologies for voltage control and reactive power compensation is presented. Energy storage systems have not been used extensively for voltage and reactive power compensation due to low efficiency and short lifecycle of battery banks. This thesis presents new techniques to measure and improve battery performance and increase life expectancy. In addition, a battery energy storage system is connected in parallel with the dc link capacitor of StatCom and unified power flow controller technologies. Simulation and testing are done at low voltage and low power to investigate the effectiveness of the system at distribution levels. |
