Centralized vs. Decentralized Deployment of Battery Energy Storage System on Offshore Platforms

Abstract

Energy storage (ES) integration with offshore platforms is promising if significant cost and carbon emissions reduction needs to be realized. An important question is how ES should be deployed, considering both the centralized and decentralized alternatives. Centralized deployment considers all the ES in one location while in decentralized deployment, the ES is implemented in different locations. In this work, an algorithm is proposed to compare the technical and economic benefits of the centralized and decentralized deployments. The selected case study comprises a 15 MW/25.6 MWh ES deployment for spinning reserve provision and efficiency increase in a real offshore oil and gas platform. For the centralized deployment, two cases are considered with the whole ES capacity located on a new floating platform: near the main platform in one case (case C1) and near a wind farm in the other case (case C2). For the decentralized deployment, two configurations are evaluated for spreading the total ES capacity: a case with one part on the main platform, one part on floating wind turbine (WT) structures and one part on a nearby platform (case D1), and a case with all the BESS spread on floating WT structures (case D2). The results show that for this case study even though the decentralized deployment in case D2 has the lowest efficiency it is potentially the cheapest choice due to the economic impact of installing a new floating platform. However, sensitivity analysis was performed and the results show that given a different case study and significant reduction in cost of floating platform centralized BESS can be promising.