In this paper, a battery energy storage system (BESS) based control method is proposed to improve the damping ratio of a target oscillation mode to a desired level by charging or discharging the installed BESS using local measurements. The expected damping improvement by BESS is derived analytically for both a single-machineinfinite-bus system and a multi-machine system. This BESS-based approach is tested on a four-generator, twoarea power system. Effects of the power converter limit, response time delay, power system stabilizers and battery state-of-charge on the control performance are also investigated. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.