The operation strategy for a lab-scale grid-connected photovoltaic generation system integrated with battery energy storage is proposed in this paper. The photovoltaic generation system is composed of a full-bridge inverter, a DC-DC boost converter, an isolated bidirectional DC-DC converter, a solar cell array and a battery set. Since the battery set acts as an energy buffer to adjust the power generation of the solar cell array, the negative impact on power quality caused by the intermittent and unstable output power from a solar cell array is alleviated, so the penetration rate of the grid-connected photovoltaic generation system is increased. A lab-scale prototype is developed to verify the performance of the system. The experimental results show that it achieves the expected performance. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.