Energy storage technologies that are connected to medium- or low-voltage distribution systems are referred to as Distributed Energy Storage (DES). DES are becoming more common as the storage technologies are becoming cheaper. Energy stored on the distribution system, whether it is generated by Distributed Generation (DG) or central generation units, could provide crucial services (such as load leveling, automatic generation control, smoothing fluctuations in intermittent sources, etc) to electricity suppliers. The need of the hour is to effectively utilize these distributed storage devices so as to lower operating costs while offering aforementioned services. In contemporary literature, while DES have been considered, they could only be charged/discharged from/to the grid. The current work marks a significant departure with the goal of allowing storage devices to charge each other. Such battery-to-battery energy transfer is useful for instance in scenarios when generators cannot be run for certain reasons, or that it might cause too much load on the network, if the storage devices were to be charged directly from the power grid. Simulation results on a 30-bus IEEE benchmark system validate the benefits of inter-storage charge transfers.
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