• Collective battery storage beneficial fo

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Thu Jul 8 21:30:34 2021
    Collective battery storage beneficial for decarbonized world

    Date:
    July 8, 2021
    Source:
    University of Otago
    Summary:
    Batteries are potentially a game-changing technology as we
    decarbonize our economy, and their benefits are even greater when
    shared across communities, a new study has found.



    FULL STORY ========================================================================== Batteries are potentially a game-changing technology as we decarbonize
    our economy, and their benefits are even greater when shared across communities, a University of Otago-led study has found.


    ========================================================================== Co-author Associate Professor Michael Jack, Director of the Energy
    Programme in the Department of Physics, says reducing costs are seeing
    rapid deployment of batteries for household use, mainly for storing
    solar and wind power for later use, but they could have a variety of
    uses in a future electricity grid.

    "For example, they could be used to feed energy back into the grid when
    there is a shortfall in renewable supply. Or they could allow a house to
    reduce its demand on the grid during times of constraint, thus reducing
    the need for expensive new lines.

    "As we move towards more renewable energy, and increase our use of
    electric vehicles, these services would be beneficial to a local community
    and the national grid, not just the individual house with the battery,"
    he says.

    The study, published in journal Energy & Buildings, focused on finding
    the capacity a battery would need to have to keep the peak demand below
    a certain value for both individual houses and a group of houses.

    The researchers considered both load smoothing around the average,
    and peak shaving, where the battery ensures grid power demand does not
    exceed a set threshold.

    "Our key result is that the size of the battery required for this
    purpose is much smaller -- up to 90 per cent smaller -- if the houses
    are treated collectively rather than individually. For instance, if peak shaving occurred for demand above 3 kW per house, deploying batteries individually for 20 houses would require 120 kWh of storage, whereas
    deploying them collectively would only require 7 kWh. Sharing batteries
    or having one battery per 20 houses will be a much cheaper approach to providing these services.

    "Another important finding was that as peaks are mainly in winter, the
    battery would still be largely available for storing energy from solar
    cells in summer, so this would be an additional service and not competing
    with the main use of the battery," Associate Professor Jack says.

    While electricity markets are not currently set up to harness this
    potential, the situation is rapidly changing.

    "There is currently a trial lead by Aurora Energy and SolarZero to use batteries in the way we have described in our paper to solve issues
    with constrained lines in upper Clutha. Once proven, this model has the potential to become much more widespread," he says.

    In the future, many households may have batteries and be using these, or batteries within their electric vehicles, to provide services to the grid.

    These batteries and other appliances in homes and businesses will have
    smart controllers that enable them to reduce demand or feed electricity
    back into the grid to accommodate the fluctuations of variable renewable
    supply and minimize the need for grid infrastructure. People responding
    in this way would be paid for their services to the wider grid.

    "This could enable a much lower cost, collective,
    route to decarbonizing New Zealand's energy system." ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Otago. Note: Content
    may be edited for style and length.


    ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
    1. Jason Mair, Kiti Suomalainen, David M. Eyers, Michael
    W. Jack. Sizing
    domestic batteries for load smoothing and peak shaving based on
    real- world demand data. Energy and Buildings, 2021; 247: 111109
    DOI: 10.1016/ j.enbuild.2021.111109 ==========================================================================

    Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210708103625.htm

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