Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) at Alaska Center for Energy and Power
Abstract
ABSTRACT: Alaska is home to over 200 remote islanded microgrids, ranging in size from tens of kW to tens of MW. Motivated by fuel availability and cost constraints, and enabled by significant wind resource, many communities are exploring significant penetration levels of variable renewable energy. The resulting systems share many characteristics with an electric ship power system,including limited rotational inertia, short electrical distances, multiple similarly sized parallel generators and/or converters, and converter-dominated dynamics. Secondarily, arctic applications are another overlapping area of interest between Alaska remote community power systems and naval power and energy systems. Consequently, lessons learned in these terrestrial applications can be leveraged for naval power and energy systems. Notably, Alaska is pushingthe envelope for the use of battery energy storage system (BESS) technology to enable high levels of wind penetration in remote communities. The use cases for BESS in these islanded microgrids are similar to the use cases on an electric ship, including contingency and regulating reserve, primary frequency response, energy time-shifting, and allowing diesel-off operation.Opportunities, motivation, and willingness to innovate make Alaska a living laboratory for deploying and validating battery-energy storage technologies for microgrids. Towards that end, researchers at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP), University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) work together with Alaska communities, utilities, developers, and government (federal,state, local, and tribal) to optimize energy storage integration into these islanded microgrids. A critical component to this research is laboratory testing at meaningful power levels to develop and validate technologies prior to deployment. This is particularly important for remote and/orhigh-risk applications. ACEP~s Power System Integration (PSI) lab was designed and built specifically for this purpose. The PSI lab includes many of the components of a ~typical~ remote Alaska renewable-diesel microgrid, including diesel generators, programmable load banks, a PVemulator plus PV inverter, a wind turbine emulator, a fault emulator, a battery bank plus energy storage inverter, a microgrid control platform, real-time simulation capabilities for phased risk testing including controller hardware-in-the-loop (CHIL) and power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL). The PSI lab capabilities allow for testing microgrid components, as well as associated control systems, with a significant focus on those energy storage technologies that enable highrenewable penetration microgrids. ACEP plans on continuing to develop and leverage PSI lab capabilities for in-house and collaborative research related to use of energy storage to support high renewable penetrationmicrogrids. A state-of-the-art (SOA) BESS platform is required to provide the spinning reserve and frequency response use-cases that are driving current BESS deployments in islanded microgrids. The existing lead-acid battery bank is not SOA. Instead, Li-ion has become the battery of choice to provide the high charge and discharge rates requires for these applications.This Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) proposal seeks funds to purchase a State-of-the-Art 600 kW discharge / 260 kW charge / 220 kWh Li-ion battery for the Power Systems Integration Lab at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power. The purchase will leverage ACEP~s existing energy storage inverter and PSI lab capabilities, and it will enhancecurrent ACEP research capabilities in the area of integration of battery-energy storage systems on weak electrical grids including remote Alaskan communities, tactical military power systems, and electric ships.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- May 23, 2019
- Source ID
- N000141912354
Entities
People
- Mariko Shirazi
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Alaska Fairbanks