UTFacultiesEEMCSEnergy in TwenteAssignmentsFinished AssignmentsDevelopment of a simulation tool for real-time battery analysis in smart grids

Development of a simulation tool for real-time battery analysis in smart grids

Master's assignment

Student: Manoel Alcantara
Supervisors: Diego Quintero and Johann Hurink
Programme: Sustainable Energy Technology - University of Twente
Finished: August 2019 

In the field of energy storage, several technologies are being researched and tested to improve the existing storage systems and increase their importance for smart-grids. In order to achieve these goals, the storage technologies need to overcome their actual constraints of capacity, energy density, security and/or cost. Currently, lead-acid, NiMH and lithium-ion are technologies that are in the mature phase of development and commercialization to be used in smart grids or stand-alone applications. However, new technologies are being developed and evaluated as the Sea-Salt battery, mainly also due to their lower environmental impact, lower cost and higher durability when compared to other technologies.

The purpose of this work is to study the behavior of real multiple battery technologies when subjected to the expected load profiles in a neighborhood together with intermittent input from renewable sources. For the acquisition of these models, a real-time battery analyzer will be developed based on the connection between Labview and Vencon. This tool can obtain the behavior of the batteries under different parameters of voltage profile, autonomy, and energy quality. With the acquisition of these responses, an evaluation can be performed to provide a better understanding of the real behavior of batteries when supporting smart grids, and it may improve the methods for sizing electricity storage for microgrid and stand-alone applications.

Tasks: 

  1. A literature review of the different available battery technologies that can be used in smart grids.
  2. Develop an experiment to test and evaluate batterie voltage profiles.
  3. Research on simulation tools for real-time analysis.
  4. Develop the link between the battery analyzer (Vencon) and the Labview environment.
  5. Start the comparison between the results obtained on the Labview real-time simulator with the battery models available.