Currently, electrical grids worldwide are experiencing substantial structural and operational changes. Generation and demand profiles are evolving while the grid assets and infrastructures are aging. Social, political, and economic factors push to a decrease of the fuel consumption and a limitation of undesirable emission while the global demand continues to increase.
The development of generation, storage and power electronic technologies gives rise to a wide variety of solutions to the current and future needs in the energy field at different levels.
Battery cells are intensively tested by manufacturers under static standard profiles. However, there are high deviations in the performance when the technology is “packaged” into utility scale solutions and is operated under real mixed “power and energy profiles”, far from standards tests by manufacturer.
There is not a single technology that covers both power and energy services in a cost-effective way, so traditional BESS (Battery Based Energy Storage System) approach often leads to non-optimal or even to unprofitable solutions.
A HESS (Hybrid Energy Storage System) permits to combine the features of the various technology to be integrated in a system all-in-a-box, leveraging their synergies, and extending their performances.
There is high difference between power and energy issues, and they should be separately solved. The solution for power and energy issues is optimally provided by different types of technology, so that, besides the maturity of Li-Ion technologies, the use of a BESS (only battery based ESS) is not always the best choice for solving a scenario with a mixture of profiles.
Hybrid storage means “using the best of all worlds”. A hybrid storage system combines different storage technologies leveraging their features and their synergies for obtaining a single solution that adapts to any type of application with power and energy requirements.
The use of a technology for providing a response with a higher power density requirement (such as an energy battery for providing a response of a few seconds or minutes) requires the installation of a high amount of energy than needed. On the contrary, the use of a power technology for providing a high amount of energy involves an excess of power capability that is not used. The use of the proper technology or a combination of them for providing one or more stacked services avoids this oversizing.
The pain point of the batteries performance under “power profiles”, which creates uncertainties about operation and degradation, is currently approached through oversizing a BESS solution (only battery system), leading to additional costs (in CAPEX and OPEX) in an expensive technology beforehand (commonly Li-Ion) and eliminating the profitability of the BESS solution. A sizing based on power requirements with a non-optimal technology involves an oversizing in terms of energy.
Most efficient way to solve these pain points is to decouple power and energy and face both needs with the combination of those storage technologies with features that match the needs of every specific scenario, avoiding any kind of oversizing.
This is mainly caused because Li-Ion is the most well-known technology and is used even when their performance/cost features are not the most suitable for the application leading to excessive costs, and because there is not a commercial flexible hybrid technology (besides HESStec’s SHAD®) able to optimally integrate different chemistries according to the specific need of every case.
A hybrid energy storage solution expands the possibilities of storage technologies, as it combines different types of technologies, leveraging their synergies and extending the performance of an energy storage solution. Only a HESS can optimally provide both power and energy services simultaneously, facing the different types of grids needs in a single system all-in-a-box.
A hybrid solution allows utilities to deal with the specific power and energy issues of the grid, minimizing the dependence on the storage technologies constraints. Hybrid storage technology provides a wide range of solutions, from power BESS to energy BESS covering the whole spectrum of possible hybrid power/energy ratios.
Hybris Project uses two different technologies, li-ion batteries, and red flow batteries.
To manage these BESS, Hesstec will provide an InMS™. Intelligent Node Management System (InMS™) is a hardware and software control platform integrating proprietary algorithms, oriented towards an optimal planning and multi-service operation by the end-user based on a deep know-how of the storage technologies and their performance into real grid scale applications.
This is the Energy Management System (EMS) or Power Plant Controller of HESStec, that can be configured different applications, from off-grid microgrids to grid-connected applications with external communications with the SCADA of DSO/TSO or connection to energy market platforms.
Written by Carlos Blasco from Hybrid Energy Storage Solutions Ltd.
