Control of Energy Storage

Energy storage can provide numerous beneficial services and cost savings within the electricity grid, especially when facing future challenges like renewable and electric vehicle (EV) integration. Public bodies, private companies and individuals are deploying storage facilities for several purposes, including arbitrage, grid support, renewable generation, and demand-side management. Storage deployment can therefore yield benefits like reduced frequency fluctuation, better asset utilisation and more predictable power profiles. Such uses of energy storage can reduce the cost of energy, reduce the strain on the grid, reduce the environmental impact of energy use, and prepare the network for future challenges. This Special Issue of Energies explore the latest developments in the control of energy storage in support of the wider energy network, and focus on the control of storage rather than the storage technology itself

Electric Vehicles as a Mobile Storage Device

International audienceElectricity is a quite recent energy (150 years old) that has developed very much as it allows a flexible use through converters (electrical machines and power electronics). At the beginning, the main use was for lighting and metro. Now, electricity is a major energy for developed countries: 17.7% of the world final energy consumption and 22% for the ECD countries (IEA, 2013a; b, Figure 1), and an economic growth is always linked to an electric consumption growth. Electricity has improved our daily life: washer, dryer, dishwasher, microwaves, internet, TV, air-conditioning, and so on. Humans have become very dependent on electricity consumptions. Nevertheless, electricity is a specific product in the sense that it is a nonmaterial energy, and thus it can only be stored through a costly transformation. Electricity can be classified as a tertiary or secondary energy produced from thermal, potential, hydro (see Volume 5, Chapter XX), wind hces137, or solar energy. For a thermal plant, the primary energy (coal, gas, or uranium) is converted into mechanical energy (secondary energy) by a turbine and is transmitted to the generator to be converted into electricity (tertiary energy). As electricity is difficult to store, it needs an infrastructure to be delivered to consumers: the electrical grid that makes the link between power plants and the consumers through transformers and overhead or cabled lines. At the beginning of the twentieth century, all countries made the choice of the alternating current technology as it allowed—thanks to a key device (the transformer) transmission of high power at high voltages to reduce losses. In the context of emissions reduction (CO2, NOx, etc.), objectives have been given for cleaner energies and the use of more efficient ones. In Europe, there are the “20–20–20” targets: 20% reduction for CO2 emissions, 20% reduction in energy consumption, and 20% increase in efficiency by 2020 (see Volume 6, Chapter XX). To reach these policy goals, electricity is an appropriate vector: it is a flexible energy that can be produced from renewable or CO2-free sources, electrical converters have high efficiency (80–90% for an electric motor) and are bidirectional what makes energy recovery possible for applications such as breaking (trains, vehicles, etc.). Transportation (cars, autobuses, and trucks) is often considered a major contributor to local pollution. Then, constraints for CO2 emissions reduction are more and more severe, especially in Europe. Automakers and their suppliers have optimized their engines with innovations such as start&stop starter/generator, kinetic energy recovery ystems, hybrid systems, and full battery electric vehicles (EVs) and plugin hybrid vehicles. For the two last cases, the energy stored in the batteries will totally or partially come from the electric grid

Sustainable Mobility and Transport

This Special Issue is dedicated to sustainable mobility and transport, with a special focus on technological advancements. Global transport systems are significant sources of air, land, and water emissions. A key motivator for this Special Issue was the diversity and complexity of mitigating transport emissions and industry adaptions towards increasingly stricter regulation. Originally, the Special Issue called for papers devoted to all forms of mobility and transports. The papers published in this Special Issue cover a wide range of topics, aiming to increase understanding of the impacts and effects of mobility and transport in working towards sustainability, where most studies place technological innovations at the heart of the matter. The goal of the Special Issue is to present research that focuses, on the one hand, on the challenges and obstacles on a system-level decision making of clean mobility, and on the other, on indirect effects caused by these changes

Game Theoretical Approach for Joint Relay Selection and Resource Allocation in Mobile Device Networks

With the improvement of hardware, more and more multimedia applications are allowed to run in the mobile device. However, due to the limited radio bandwidth, wireless network performance becomes a critical issue. Common mobile solutions are based on the centralized structure, which require an access point to handle all the communication requirement in the work area. The transmission performance of centralized framework relies on the density of access points. But increasing the number of access points will cost lot of money and the interference between access point will reduce the transmission quality. Thanks to the wireless sensor network implementations, the distributed wireless network solution has been well studied. Now, many mobile network studies introduce the device to device idea which is a distributed structure of mobile network. Unlike wireless sensor networks, mobile networks have more movability and higher transmission speed requirement. In order to be used in mobile networks, a distributed network management algorithm needs to perform faster and more accurate. In this thesis, a new pairing algorithm is proposed to provide a better transmission quality for multimedia data. In the proposed approach, the multimedia data is quantized by distortion reduction. Then, the source-relay pairing solution is optimized by a history tracing system using game theory to improve the expected overall distortion reduction of the entire network. Several parameters are introduced in the proposed solution, so the optimization would fit for different situations. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves higher overall distortion reduction by avoiding the competition between nodes. Simulation results also show the parameters would affect the system performance, such as optimization speed, system stability and system overall transmit speed

iCity. Transformative Research for the Livable, Intelligent, and Sustainable City

This open access book presents the exciting research results of the BMBF funded project iCity carried out at University of Applied Science Stuttgart to help cities to become more liveable, intelligent and sustainable, to become a LIScity. The research has been pursued with industry partners and NGOs from 2017 to 2020. A LIScity is increasingly digitally networked, uses resources efficiently, and implements intelligent mobility concepts. It guarantees the supply of its grid-bound infrastructure with a high proportion of renewable energy. Intelligent cities are increasingly human-centered, integrative, and flexible, thus placing the well-being of the citizens at the center of developments to increase the quality of life. The articles in this book cover research aimed to meet these criteria. The book covers research in the fields of energy (i.e. algorithms for heating and energy storage systems, simulation programs for thermal local heating supply, runtime optimization of combined heat and power (CHP), natural ventilation), mobility (i.e. charging distribution and deep learning, innovative emission-friendly mobility, routing apps, zero-emission urban logistics, augmented reality, artificial intelligence for individual route planning, mobility behavior), information platforms (i.e. 3DCity models in city planning: sunny places visualization, augmented reality for windy cities, internet of things (IoT) monitoring to visualize device performance, storing and visualizing dynamic energy data of smart cities), and buildings and city planning (i.e. sound insulation of sustainable facades and balconies, multi-camera mobile systems for inspection of tunnels, building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) as active façade elements, common space, the building envelopes potential in smart sustainable cities)

Battery Energy Storage Systems in the United Kingdom: A Review of Current State-of-the-Art and Future Applications

The number of battery energy storage systems (BESSs) installed in the United Kingdom and worldwide is growing rapidly due to a variety of factors, including technological improvements, reduced costs and the ability to provide various ancillary services. The aim of this paper is to carry out a comprehensive literature review on this technology, its applications in power systems and to identify potential future developments. At first, the main BESSs projects in the UK are presented and classified. The parameters provided for each project include rated power, battery technology and ancillary services provided, if any. In the next section, the most commonly deployed ancillary services are classified and described. At the same time, the nomenclature found in the literature is explained and harmonised. The second part of the paper focuses on future developments and research gaps: ancillary services that currently are not common but that are likely to be deployed more widely in the future will be described, and more general research topics related to the development of BESSs for power system applications will be outlined

Electric vehicle as a service (EVaaS):applications, challenges and enablers

Under the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) concept, electric vehicles (EVs) can be deployed as loads to absorb excess production or as distributed energy resources to supply part of their stored energy back to the grid. This paper overviews the technologies, technical components and system requirements needed for EV deployment. Electric vehicle as a service (EVaaS) exploits V2G technology to develop a system where suitable EVs within the distribution network are chosen individually or in aggregate to exchange energy with the grid, individual customers or both. The EVaaS framework is introduced, and interactions among EVaaS subsystems such as EV batteries, charging stations, loads and advanced metering infrastructure are studied. The communication infrastructure and processing facilities that enable data and information exchange between EVs and the grid are reviewed. Different strategies for EV charging/discharging and their impact on the distribution grid are reviewed. Several market designs that incentivize energy trading in V2G environments are discussed. The benefits of V2G are studied from the perspectives of ancillary services, supporting of renewables and the environment. The challenges to V2G are studied with respect to battery degradation, energy conversion losses and effects on distribution system