BESS Demand Shaving: Great Until the Plant Trips

We installed a battery energy storage system to shave peaks and green our load profile. Finance cheered. Week 2: nuisance trips all over. VFD under-voltage faults, compressor PLC went to safe state, a few control valves hunting.

Turns out the BESS controller was a little too eager. It was chasing 1-second spikes and handing the utility an oscillating power factor party. Tie that to a stiff plant with lots of VFDs and marginal ride-through, and you've engineered your own brownouts. Well, there's your problem.

Fix was not fancy: slow the dispatch ramp, add hysteresis, enable VFD ride-through and DC bus regulation, and interlock aggressive shaving with process permissives. Also gave critical MCCs priority so the battery never steals from them. Demand still dropped, alarms stopped.

Anyone else seen power quality side effects from green add-ons? What settings or interlocks saved you?