The role of modeling battery degradation in bulk power system optimizations

Battery energy storage is critical to decarbonizing future power systems, and the cost of battery degradation within power system operations is crucial to ensure economic utilization of battery resources and provide a fair return to their investors. Power system operators dispatch assets by solving optimization problems of extreme complexity that include thousands of generators and transmission lines, and degradation models to be incorporated into power system optimization must be efficient to compute while capturing key degradation factors relevant to grid operations. This paper will compare various degradation models that are incorporable into power system optimization; each has different computation complexities and modeling focuses. This paper will summarize the pros and cons of different models, and how they may suit different battery technologies or configurations. Besides modeling, the paper discusses the opportunity cost of degradation and the battery warranty terms, both will impact the design and implementation of degradation models in power systems. The paper summarizes the comparison and future directions for designing degradation models for grid-scale batteries. Graphical abstract