1. Life Cycle Assessment of Classic and Innovative Batteries for Solar Home Systems in Europe.
- Author
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Rossi, Federico, Parisi, Maria Laura, Greven, Sarah, Basosi, Riccardo, and Sinicropi, Adalgisa
- Subjects
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SOLAR houses , *SOLAR batteries , *SOLAR system , *LITHIUM-ion batteries , *SOLAR radiation , *BATTERY storage plants , *SOLID state batteries - Abstract
This paper presents an environmental sustainability assessment of residential user-scale energy systems, named solar home systems, encompassing their construction, operation, and end of life. The methodology adopted is composed of three steps, namely a design phase, a simulation of the solar home systems' performance and a life cycle assessment. The analysis aims to point out the main advantages, features, and challenges of lithium-ion batteries, considered as a benchmark, compared with other innovative devices. As the environmental sustainability of these systems is affected by the solar radiation intensity during the year, a sensitivity analysis is performed varying the latitude of the installation site in Europe. For each site, both isolated and grid-connected solar home systems have been compared considering also the national electricity mix. A general overview of the results shows that, regardless of the installation site, solid state nickel cobalt manganese and nickel cobalt aluminium lithium-ion batteries are the most suitable choices in terms of sustainability. Remarkably, other novel devices, like sodium-ion batteries, are already competitive with them and have great potential. With these batteries, the solar home systems' eco-profile is generally advantageous compared to the energy mix, especially in on-grid configurations, with some exceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
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