Flexible operation of shared energy storage at households to facilitate PV penetration

•New concept of 'shared storage' to enable joint storage between DNOs and customers.•New tariff-based storage operation to optimise costs and PV output for customers.•A new method for enabling DNOs to resolve network issues by using shared storage.•Significant value has been realised from the algorithms by the industry in practice.

This paper proposes a new methodology to enable high penetration of photovoltaic (PV) generation in low voltage (LV) distribution networks by using shared battery storage and variable tariffs. The battery installed at customer premises is shared between customers and local distribution network operators (DNOs) to achieve two goals-minimizing energy costs for customers and releasing distribution network constraints for DNOs. The two objectives are realised through a new concept - “charging envelope”, which dynamically allocates storage capacity between customers and the DNO. Charging envelope first reserves a portion of storage capacity for network operator's priority to mitigate network problems caused by either thermal or voltage limit violation in order to defer or even reduce network investment. Then, the remaining capacity is used by customers to respond to energy price variations to facilitate in-home PV penetration. Case study results show that the concept can provide an attractive solution to realise the dual conflicting objectives for network operators and customers. The proposed concept has been adopted by the Western Power Distribution (UK) in a smart grid demonstration project SoLa Bristol.