To investigate the operation and interaction of Combined Energy Storage Systems

The intermittent nature of wind and increased penetration of renewable energy sources has an impact on energy systems, and energy storage has been identified as a key solution to enhance the reliability of electricity supply. There are many competing energy storage technologies available, such as: Electrochemical Batteries, Flow Batteries, Supercapacitors, Flywheels, Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES), Liquefied Air Energy Storage (LAES), Pumped Hydro Storage (PHS), Pumped Heat Electrical Storage (PHES), and others. One of the main tasks of energy storage is to balance energy supply and demand maintaining security of supply and reducing emissions. Often modelling and simulation studies are performed to analyse the behaviour of energy networks combined with energy storage. However, to validate and verify these models experiments have to be conducted taking into account specific operational requirements of different energy storage systems.

Furthermore, most energy storage systems involve electrical energy conversion to another form of energy (electrical to chemical, thermal, potential or kinetic) and vice versa. During charging and discharging the quality of stored energy (exergy) decreases as part of electrical energy is converted to thermal energy which dissipates into environment. Therefore, to analyse how energy storage systems could be integrated with energy networks and how efficiency of energy storage systems could be increased holistic approach to energy storage should be used taking into account both energy vectors: electrical and thermal energy.

The aim of this project is to investigate the operation and interaction between various energy storage systems integrated with energy networks through computer simulation and experimental verification. This project will address two key research challenges: how integrated Energy Storage systems could contribute to the reduction of carbon emissions from UK energy sector; how integrated Energy Storage systems could increase security of supply.

The main tasks of the project are:

To study how energy storage systems could be combined with renewable energy sources;
To investigate the interaction of different energy storage systems and renewable generation on local demand side energy networks;
To analyse how overall energy supply and demand could be met using energy storage systems;
To develop and validate integrated energy storage, renewable generation models with grid scale energy network models.
To conduct this study “Integrated Energy Storage Test and Verification facility” (IESTV), built in the Department of Engineering as part of Energy Research Accelerator (ERA) project will be used, and models of combined energy systems will be developed.