I came across a LinkedIn repost by Emerson’s Brett Benson about the news of the Ovation Green battery storage system (BESS) solution. Large-scale battery storage systems are being installed to store the energy generated by renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar.
Brett highlights the complexity of managing these energy storage applications. He writes:
It’s easy to presume that Battery ESS management is simple, it’s just directing a BMS to charge and discharge. How hard can that be? In the real world of utility scale, it’s actually extremely complex. While the BMS manages the racks of batteries, the EMS aggregates and coordinates dozens of the BMS’s, the cubicles’ ancillary systems, the PCS’s, and the plant’s subsystems to respond to grid demands to form a ‘single plant’ from the SO perspective in a compliant manner.
The algorithms developed in Ovation specifically for BESS simplify the charge/discharge decision-making made more difficult by the fact all of those individual components have their own characteristics (I call them ‘personalities’). Meanwhile, there can easily be 1M points of data to collect and store.
Using this data to empower the user to get the best performance and safety out of their BESS is what our partnership with Zitara brings to our portfolio. There is a lot of opportunity to make battery systems perform better and we’re well into making that happen with Ovation Green.
This BESS solution connects devices and systems across manufacturers, aggregating and contextualizing battery storage data to provide actionable insights that help optimize battery usage and extend battery life, enabling higher profitability, efficiency, and sustainability.
The solution includes an advanced, specialized battery algorithm suite that streamlines battery control through out-of-the-box, customizable function blocks, which distribute proportioned setpoints to individual components, such as inverters and battery management systems. The resulting control strategy automatically optimizes charge and discharge cycles, as well as grid interactions, for fast, precise, and reliable demand management.
The collaboration between Emerson and Zitara Technologies expands Ovation Green BESS capabilities by integrating leading battery management with the industry-leading Ovation Automation Platform. The enhanced solution provides operators with instant and accurate visibility into the state of charge and health conditions for batteries, improving the site’s energy power and availability forecasting, and adding predictive safety features.
This solution enables owners and operators to achieve optimized battery usage and extended battery life, ultimately leading to higher profitability, efficiency, and sustainability. In addition, the more standardized and repeatable approach to battery energy management enables faster deployment across multiple sites, reduces site visits, and ensures consistent operations by eliminating the need to train every operator on a wide variety of OEM battery management interfaces.
Read the BESS new release and visit the Battery Energy Management System section on Emerson.com to learn more about simplifying the complex challenges in large-scale battery storage.
