Hybrid and Intelligent Energy Storage Systems in Standalone Photovoltaic Applications.

Remote systems such as communication relays or irrigation control installations cannot usually be powered by the electrical grid. One of the alternatives is to power these systems through solar panels, in what is known as standalone photovoltaic applications.Most of these systems need a continuous operation, but a standalone photovoltaic installation cannot be powered during the night. For this reason, they use batteries to store excess energy during the day. These storage systems have been traditionally based on Valve Regulated Lead Acid (VRLA) batteries, but some effects can alter their performance in terms of reliability, operation cost and maintenance. One of the key issues that alter the energy behavior of the photovoltaic off-grid systems is the Partial State of Charge (PSoC) effect: Batteries cannot be completely charged as manufacturers indicate due to the day-night cycle. This gets the battery into an intermediate state of charge that effectively reduces its capacity, even halving it in some cases. To mitigate the impact of these effects on the installation, batteries tend to be oversized with some security margins. These oversizing factors can be incredibly high and have a huge impact on the deployment and maintenance cost of the facility.The first part of this thesis highlights some of these key concepts, analyzing which of them are critical in specific design cases, modeling them into a simulation tool, and as an outcome, establishing optimal sizing regions for the installations. After the analysis, different ways of improving the performance of the installations are proposed. One idea to mitigate PSoC is to combine different storage technologies in a Hybrid Energy Storage Systems (HESS). HESSs have traditionally combined high energy density elements as batteries with high power density elements as ultracapacitors. An iteration of this idea is carried out throughout this thesis, where different types of batteries are combined. Each of them is best fitted to different power patterns in the application, such as daily cycles or emergency periods. It is possible to further increase the performance by using intelligent algorithms to improve the functionalities of the Battery Management Systems embedded in these applications. To this end, failure prediction and health estimation algorithms are proposed as contributions of this work. These new algorithms endow the HESS with tools to predict possible energy disruption events and to anticipate aging, and thus, act accordingly.<br /

Molten Salt Thermal Energy Storage Systems

The feasibility of storing thermal energy at temperatures of 450 C to 535 C in the form of latent heat of fusion was examined for over 30 inorganic salts and salt mixtures. Alkali carbonate mixtures were chosen as phase-change storage materials in this temperature range because of their relatively high storage capacity and thermal conductivity, moderate cost, low volumetric expansion upon melting, low corrosivity, and good chemical stability. Means of improving heat conduction through the solid salt were explored

Energy storage systems comparison for the space station

An overview of the requirements, options, selection criteria and other considerations, and current status with regard to the energy storage subsystem (ESS) for the photovoltaic power system alternative for the space station is provided

Cost projections for Redox Energy storage systems

A preliminary design and system cost analysis was performed for the redox energy storage system. A conceptual design and cost estimate was prepared for each of two energy applications: (1) electric utility 100-MWh requirement (10-MW for ten hours) for energy storage for utility load leveling application, and (2) a 500-kWh requirement (10-kW for 50 hours) for use with a variety of residential or commercial applications, including stand alone solar photovoltaic systems. The conceptual designs were based on cell performance levels, system design parameters, and special material costs. These data were combined with estimated thermodynamic and hydraulic analysis to provide preliminary system designs. Results indicate that the redox cell stack to be amenable to mass production techniques with a relatively low material cost

Conceptual design of thermal energy storage systems for near-term electric utility applications

Promising thermal energy storage systems for midterm applications in conventional electric utilities for peaking power generation are evaluated. Conceptual designs of selected thermal energy storage systems integrated with conventional utilities are considered including characteristics of alternate systems for peaking power generation, viz gas turbines and coal fired cycling plants. Competitive benefit analysis of thermal energy storage systems with alternate systems for peaking power generation and recommendations for development and field test of thermal energy storage with a conventional utility are included. Results indicate that thermal energy storage is only marginally competitive with coal fired cycling power plants and gas turbines for peaking power generation

Battery energy storage systems

Author name used in this publication: D. SutantoVersion of RecordPublishe

A review of solar collectors and thermal energy storage in solar thermal applications

Thermal applications are drawing increasing attention in the solar energy research field, due to their high performance in energy storage density and energy conversion efficiency. In these applications, solar collectors and thermal energy storage systems are the two core components. This paper focuses on the latest developments and advances in solar thermal applications, providing a review of solar collectors and thermal energy storage systems. Various types of solar collectors are reviewed and discussed, including both non-concentrating collectors (low temperature applications) and concentrating collectors (high temperature applications). These are studied in terms of optical optimisation, heat loss reduction, heat recuperation enhancement and different sun-tracking mechanisms. Various types of thermal energy storage systems are also reviewed and discussed, including sensible heat storage, latent heat storage, chemical storage and cascaded storage. They are studied in terms of design criteria, material selection and different heat transfer enhancement technologies. Last but not least, existing and future solar power stations are overviewed.Peer reviewe