Search

• Solar photovoltaics stored by using cheap and abundant materials. • The Calcium-Looping process is integrated as electricity stored system (40% efficiency) • Electric-to-electric performance of the whole system reaches 57%. • A notable cost reduction could be achieved as alternative to batteries. Solar photovoltaic plants are today a competitive alternative to power plants based on fossil fuels. Cost reduction in photovoltaics modules, scalability and ease of installation of these plants are enabling a rapid worldwide expansion of the technology. Nevertheless, dispatchability still remains as the major challenge to overcome due the intrinsic variability of solar energy. Most of the current solar photovoltaic facilities at large scale lack energy storage while those with storage systems rely on expensive batteries. Batteries are based on elements such as nickel, lithium or cadmium whose scarcity hinder their sustainability for storing energy in the large scale. This manuscript presents a novel concept to integrate thermochemical energy storage in photovoltaic plants. Furthermore, the concept is also directly adaptable to wind power plants to store surplus energy. The paper analyses the suitability of the Calcium-Looping process as thermochemical energy storage system in solar photovoltaics plants. The system works as follows: part of the power produced in the solar plant provides electricity to the grid while the rest is used to supply heat for calcination of calcium carbonate. After calcination, the products of the reaction – calcium oxide and carbon dioxide- are stored separately. When power production is required, the stored products are brought together in a carbonation reactor wherein the exothermic reaction releases energy for power production. The overall system is simulated to estimate the process behaviour and results show that storage efficiencies of ∼40% can be achieved. Moreover, an economic analysis is developed to compare the proposed system with batteries. Due to the low price of natural calcium oxide precursors, such as limestone, and the expected longer lifetime of equipment as compared to batteries, the Calcium-Looping process can be considered as a potential alternative for improving dispatchability in solar photovoltaic plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable energy (RE) penetration growth without energy storage system (ESS) is restricted due to its poor dispatchability. Compressed air energy storage system (CAES) is one of the promising ESS technologies. But, low energy density and high mechanical inertia confined its application as a bulk ESS. In this paper, a novel hybrid thermal-compressed supercritical carbon dioxide energy storage (T-CCES) system is proposed to address CAES shortcomings. In this system, a stratified water thermal energy storage (TES) is employed to store both released heat of compression process and high-frequency reluctant power of a wind farm (which cannot be followed by CCES) using electrical heaters. A dynamic simulation is performed to evaluate system characteristics in steady wind generation condition and in a real wind generation condition. Stochastic simulation of the proposed system integrated with a real wind farm is also fulfilled to assess its characteristics and performance by considering uncertainties using sparse polynomial chaos expansion. Additionally, global sensitivity analysis via Sobol’ indices is conducted to identify the most important parameters of the system. Results show that the system can store wind power during off-peak hours and smoothly releases it into the grid with 57.55% round-trip efficiency (RTE) and 84.1 kWh/m 3 energy density. Uncertainty quantification results indicate that the system can properly work under uncertainties with standard deviation of 55.72–58.16% RTE and 83.7–86.5 kWh/m 3 energy density. Moreover, results show that the random production of wind turbine has a negligible effect on performance characteristics of the T-CCES which makes it a promising solution for integration with wind farms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photovoltaic and wind power generations are currently seen as sustainable options of in rural electrification, particularly in standalone applications. However the variable character of solar and wind resources as well as the variable load demand prevent these generation systems from being totally reliable without suitable energy storage system. Several research works have been conducted on the use of photovoltaic and wind systems in rural electrification; however most of these works have not considered other ways of storing energy except for conventional battery storage systems. In this paper, an energy dispatch model that satisfies the load demand, taking into account the intermittent nature of the solar and wind energy sources and variations in demand, is presented for a hybrid system consisting of a photovoltaic unit, a wind unit, a pumped hydro storage system and a diesel generator. The main purpose of the developed model is to minimize the hybrid system’s operation cost while optimizing the system’s power flow considering the different component’s operational constraints. The simulations have been performed using “fmincon” implemented in Matlab. The model have been applied to two test examples; the simulation results are analyzed and compared to the case where the diesel generator is used alone to supply the given load demand. The results show that using the developed control model for the proposed hybrid system, fuel saving can be achieved compared to the case where the diesel is used alone to supply the same load patters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]