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Characterisation and optimisation of electrical energy storage in residential buildings

par Oliveira E Silva, Guilherme
Président du jury Maun, Jean Claude
Promoteur Hendrick, Patrick
Publication Non publié, 2017-06-30

Thèse de doctorat

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Résumé :

The consequences of over-reliance on fossil fuels for energy supply, namely climate change and security of supply, are pushing for the use of local, renewable energy sources which are usually variable in nature, prompting the need for energy storage. Today, there is a trend towards distributed energy storage, justified by the distributed nature of renewable energy sources and the important share of energy consumption in buildings. Important information on such small scale energy storage installations, however, is still missing and the results of the existing literature vary widely. To account for these research gaps, a thorough characterisation of energy storage technologies is performed, together with the dimensioning and optimisation of such installations in buildings, as well as some aspects of their impact on the grid.It is found that storage is still far from grid parity and expensive when compared to other solutions, although necessary for a high share of renewables. Also, energy storage is subject to important economies of scale and technical limitations that counter the reasoning for a distributed approach. There is an important lack of practical information on several energy storage technologies, and many studies on distributed storage use downsized values from large-scale installations that do not correctly depict smaller installations, leading to biased results. Nevertheless, today, lithium-ion batteries seem to be the most appropriate electrical energy storage technology for buildings, being well adapted to short term storage. On the other hand, a very high share of renewables will push for long term storage, itself a challenge given the high cost brought by a low utilisation factor. A high share of distributed generation also impacts the grid, a problem which most final consumers have no economic incentive to mitigate. Storage by itself, without a sound control strategy, does not help as it tends to increase the load variability while the peak load remains the same. Specific control algorithms could change that but incentives must be present, namely through the adaptation of current grid tariffs that do not correctly allocate existing costs. These findings are essential in the future planning of energy systems as well as in energy policy.