Storage and flexibility for enhancement of grid capacity
The reduction of CO2 emissions motivates the use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power, which are dependent on weather conditions and thus variable in time. Electricity energy production must always equal consumption at every instant. This project aims to technologies to mitigate energy imbalances due to renewable energy sources.
A decrease in CO2 emissions is necessary to reduce the global warming. One component in this reduction is to reduce the use of fossil-based fuels in electricity generation and shift production towards renewable energy sources such as wind-power and solar-power. The shift to such sources comes with additional challenges for the electricity system. One important issue is the inherent variability of such energy sources as the level of possible production changes with meteorological factors beyond our control. A fundamental property for an electrical power system in stationary operation is that the produced electric power must equal the electric power consumed in the loads. Uncontrollable variations in either load or production must hence be balanced by changes in other parts of the system. This project aims to study how this balancing can be accomplished from two perspectives. In the first perspective we study how energy storage systems can be placed and dimensioned to optimally absorb the variability. In the second perspective we study how the energy markets can be designed to promote loads to participate in balancing the variability of the renewable sources by aligning the load level with the production levels and thus reduce the need for energy storage.
Electrical storage
The first perspective is devoted to development of analysis and design methodology to optimally deploy electricity storage systems to an existing grid with the purpose of providing balancing services to the grid to mitigate the adverse effects of the variability of renewable energy sources. This ultimately entails to determine the best geographical locations to use and decide on power rating and energy storage capacity by means of mathematical models and optimization.
Power markets
The second perspective considers how energy market models and the regulatory framework can be evolved into a real-time market model which seamlessly incorporate demand response participation at a large scale. We will develop a simulation methodology which can be used to assess the performance of a specific market model implementation applied to a given network topology and characterize the properties of investigated market models with respect to variations, stability, and efficiency.
Involved in the project
Masoume Shabani, Thomas Rylander, Tomas McKelvey, Giuseppe Durisi, Jan R Svensson, Massimo Bongiorno
Partners
Hitachi, SVK, Texel energy storage, Vattenfall, Soltech Energy Solutions, Chalmers and Lund University
Funders
Swedish Energy Agency and Chalmers