Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 194–203

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Research Paper

Heat recovery and storage installation in large-scale battery systems for

effective integration of renewable energy sources into power systems
Qun Chen ⇑, Tian Zhao
Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

h i g h l i g h t s

Introduced heat recovery and storage facilities in large-scale batteries.

Utilized the stored heat to satisfy a part of heat load of residents.

Analyzed the integrated electric and thermal energy system as a whole.

Reduced the coal consumptions of both thermal power and CHP plants.

Studied the influence of the thermal parameters on the integrated energy system.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The large-scale battery is a promising solution to reduce the wind and solar curtailments, while some
Received 15 March 2017 electricity will be dissipated to heat and wasted inevitably. In this contribution, a heat recovery and ther-
Accepted 17 April 2017 mal energy storage (TES) subsystem are introduced to the battery system to recover heat generated by
Available online 20 April 2017
the battery and satisfy a part of heat load concurrently. By applying the newly proposed power flow
method in heat transfer system analysis together with the traditional power system analysis method,
Keywords: the power flow mode of the integrated electric and thermal energy system is established, and the system
Integrated electric and thermal energy
is then optimized to reduce wind curtailment. The optimized results present that the introduction of the
system
Renewable energy utilization
heat recovery and TES subsystem could supply a certain percentage of heat to residents by recovering the
Sodium-sulfur battery generated heat from the battery and decrease the coal consumption of the thermal power plant and the
Thermal energy storage combined heat and power plant simultaneously. Meanwhile, the mass flow rate of the heat conducting oil
Power flow method keeps high in most time and drops to near zero when the battery switches between charge and discharge.
Furthermore, the alternation frequency of the mass flow rate of the heat conducting oil has a lower bound
for normal operation.
Ó 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction energy storage technologies, the battery is a promising solution

Renewable energy sources (RESs) have been developed greatly
in these years due to their abundance and environmental friendli-
ness. As two main forms of RESs, the wind and solar energies pro-
vide about 9.2% of electricity in the United States currently [1], and
their penetration is estimated to grow to more than 26% by 2020
[2]. However, the wind and solar curtailments are severe due to
the intermittence and fluctuation of the wind and solar powers
and the lack of flexibility of existing power systems [3]. An uprising
solution is to introduce some energy storage facilities into power
systems, including pumped storage [4], fly-wheel [5], compressed
air [6,7], supercapacitors [8,9] and batteries. Among all these
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: chenqun@tsinghua.edu.cn (Q. Chen).
due to the high responding rate, which has been the most wide-
spread energy storage device for power system application
[10,11]. Different types of batteries have been researched and
applied in energy storage application including sodium-sulfur
(NaS) battery [12], sodium nickel chloride (NaNiCl2) battery [13],
vanadium redox battery [14], iron chromium battery [15], zinc
bromine battery [16], zinc air battery [17] and lead acid battery
[18]. Specifically, for large-scale energy storage, the NaS battery
is an adequate choice due to its low cost, long life and mature com-
mercial status [19].
On the other hand, apart from storing electrical energy directly,
there is another approach to increase the flexibility of power sys-
tem and reduce the curtailment of the wind and solar powers. That
is, convert extra electricity to heat, store heat with thermal energy
storage (TES) facilities, and supply heat to users according to the

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2017.04.076
1359-4311/Ó 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
 Q. Chen, T. Zhao / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 194–203 195

Nomenclature

A area, m2 Subscripts
c heat-power ratio B battery
cp constant pressure specific heat, J kg1 K1 CHP combined heat and power
D down ramp rate, MW min1 E electrical
F wind power loss, MW end ending time
G heat capacity flow rate, MW K1 F in fact
J binary variables in flow in
K heat transfer coefficient, W m2 K1 initial initial time
m mass flow rate, kg s1 L load
M mass, kg max maximum
N time interval ratio min minimum
P power, MW oil thermal conducting oil
R thermal resistance, K MW1 r release
S electrical energy stored in the battery, J s store
T temperature, °C T thermal energy
t time, min TES thermal energy storage
U up ramp rate, MW min1 TP thermal power
x melting percentage of the phase change material W wind power
g efficiency u users
c latent heat of the phase change material, J kg1 K1

heat load [20,21]. Although this approach is quite uneconomical
from the perspective of the second law of thermodynamics due
to the energy quality decrease in the energy conversion process,
it is effective to accommodate wind and solar powers for better
efficiency of the entire energy system.
Actually, during the charge and discharge processes of a battery,
electric energy will be partially dissipated into heat. In most of the
current battery applications, this heat is useless and harmful to the
system, which has to be transferred away to maintain a proper bat-
tery operation temperature. Depending on the battery efficiency,
the generated heat will be around 10% to 40% of the whole energy
flows through the battery, which has the same order of magnitude
as that stored in the battery. Simply dumping the generated heat in
vain is uneconomical. A feasible way to make full use of this heat is
to collect and store the generated heat by installing heat recovery
and TES facilities in the battery system and utilize the stored heat
to satisfy a part of the heat load. In this case, an integrated electri-
cal and thermal energy system is constructed.
Because the conventional analysis method of thermal system is
totally different from that of power system, most scholars studied
integrated electrical and thermal energy systems by considering
the thermal energy conservation constraint solely, but ignoring
the heat transfer constraints [22–24], which cannot fully reflect
the effect of thermal parameters on the system performance.
Recently, Chen et al. [25,26] introduced a power flow method for
analysis of heat transfer systems, which is similar to that for power
systems. In this philosophy, the heat flows in the heat transfer sys-
tem is regarded as current, which can be described by Kirchhoff’s
laws and the circuit diagram. Hu et al. [27] applied this power flow
method to analyze and optimize an integrated energy system to
reduce wind curtailment, where a phase change heat storage sys-
tem was installed in a CHP plant.
In this contribution, in order to make full use of the generated
heat during the charge and discharge processes of batteries, heat
recovery and TES facilities are installed in a battery system to sat-
isfy a part of the heat load. Then, the power flow model of the inte-
grated electric and thermal system is constructed to obtain the
constraints of the energy system and establish the corresponding
integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) optimization problem in
mathematics, which is solved with the CPLEX solver. Finally, the
optimization results with different operating parameters are pre-
sented and discussed.
2. Physical model of the integrated energy system
The integrated energy system discussed in this paper is shown
in Fig. 1. The electric powers generated from a thermal power
plant, a wind power plant and a combined heat and power (CHP)
plant are all fed into the electric grid, where a NaS battery is
installed for electric energy storage. Meanwhile, the CHP plant sat-
isfies most heat load through the heating system, and the newly
introduced TES device receives the heat generated by the battery
to satisfy the other part of heat load.
Fig. 2 presents the sketch of the battery and the TES device.
Considering the fluctuation of wind power, the battery has two
different operation modes. When the electric load is low, the bat-
tery will be charged to absorb redundant wind power. When the
electric load is high, the battery will discharge to supply electric-
ity to users through the grid. In both modes, the heat conducting
oil with the temperature TM,1 flows through the battery. The oil is
then heated to TM,2, and flows back to the TES device, where the
phase change material (PCM) is at its melting point TPCM. In the
TES device, the oil releases heat and cools down to TM,1 again.
During the whole cycle, the heat generated by the battery is trans-
ferred to the TES device by the oil. Meanwhile, the TES device
receives water from users with the temperature Tu,in, heats the
water to the temperature Tu,out and supply heat to users. During
the whole operation time the temperature of the PCM, TPCM, is
assumed constant.
3. Optimization model of the integrated energy system
3.1. Constraints of the system
The analysis starts from considering the power balance equa-
tions. At any moment, the electric power flows into the grid should
be equal to that out of the grid, and the thermal powers from the
CHP plant and the TES device should satisfy the heat load of resi-
dents. Thus the electric power and thermal power balance are
expressed as:
196 Q. Chen, T. Zhao / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 194–203

Fig. 1. The sketch of a simple integrated energy system with battery and TES device.

Fig. 2. The sketch of the structure of battery and TES device.

PE;TP þ PE;W þ PE;CHP ¼ PE;L þ PE;B ; ð1Þ PT;CHP ¼ aP T;L ; PT;TES;out ¼ ð1  aÞPT;L ; ð4Þ

where a is the percentage of heat load supplied by the CHP plant,

PT;CHP þ PT;TES ¼ PT;L ;
where PE,TP, PE,W and PE,CHP are the electric power outputs of the
thermal power plant, the wind plant, and the CHP plant, respec-
tively. PE,L stands for the electric load, and PE,B is the electric power
of the battery. PE,B > 0 and PE,B < 0 refer to the charge and discharge
processes of the battery, respectively. PT,CHP represents the thermal
power output of the CHP plant, PT,TES the thermal power supplied by
the TES device, and PT,L the thermal load of the residents. Since the
CHP plant is governed in the heat-led mode, the electric and ther-
mal power outputs of the CHP plant are related by the heat-to-
power ratio:
ð2Þ
which is assumed constant in this case.
The electric and thermal power of the battery is related by the
battery efficiency. The denotation PE,B is defined as the electric
power of the battery receives from or offers to the grid, and the
electric power actually stored in or release from the battery is
denoted as PE,B,F. These two powers have different relations in dif-
ferent battery operation modes. In the charging process shown in
Fig. 3a, the electric power actually stored in the battery is smaller
than that received from the grid:
PE;B;F ¼ gB PE;B ; ð5Þ

PT;CHP ¼ cP E;CHP ; ð3Þ PT;B ¼ ð1  gB ÞPE;B ; ð6Þ

where c is the heat-to-power ratio. where PT,B represents the thermal power generated by the battery,
In this system, the heat load is supplied from two sources: the and gB refers to the battery efficiency during the charging process.
CHP plant and the TES device. Therefore, the two thermal power Besides, current researches present that the sodium-sulfur battery
outputs have the following relations: has a quite high and stable efficiency, which reaches 80%
 Q. Chen, T. Zhao / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 194–203 197

Fig. 3. The relation between three battery powers, (a) charge process; (b) discharge process.

round-trip [28], and the temperature of the battery has little influ- Similarly, for the other two heat transfer processes, their char-
ence on the efficiency [29]. Therefore, in this work the battery effi- acteristic temperature differences, heat flow rates and thermal
ciency is assumed constant. resistances are presented in Table 1.
In the discharging process shown in Fig. 3b, the electric power Three heat transfer processes in the system have been com-
released from the battery is larger than that fed into the grid: pared to resistors, and the heat storage/release processes in the
battery and the TES device can also be compared to the charge/dis-
PE;B ¼ gB PE;B;F ; ð7Þ
charge processes of capacitors according to their thermal energy
PT;B ¼ ð1  gB ÞPE;B;F ; ð8Þ conservation equations [31]. The thermal energy conservation
equation of the battery is
These two cases are asymmetrical due to the irreversibility of
dT B
the electric-heat conversion processes, and the irreversibility PT;B ¼ PT;TES;in þ M B C B : ð13Þ
introduces nonlinearity into the system. To present the nonlinear- dt
ity explicitly, Eqs. (5)–(8) are replaced by the following constraints The thermal energy conservation equation of the TES device is
considering the sign of PE,B:
dx
PT;TES;in  PT;TES;out ¼ MTES c ; ð14Þ
PT;B ¼ ½1  gðsgnðPE;B ÞÞ PE;B ; ð9Þ dt
where PT,TES,in and PT,TES,out represents the thermal powers flow into
PE;B;F ¼ gðsgnðPE;B ÞÞ ; ð10Þ and out of the TES device, respectively. MTES refers to the mass of the
where sgn(PE,B) is the sign function of PE,B. It has the values of 1 phase change material (PCM) in the TES device, c refers to the latent
when PE,B > 0 and 1 when PE,B < 0. heat of the PCM, and x refers to the melting percentage of the PCM.
Eqs. (1)–(4), (9) and (10) describe the power balance relation of These three thermal resistances and two capacitors make up the cir-
the system, which should always hold during the whole operation cuit shown in Fig. 4, where the thermal resistances represent heat
time. Next, the energy transport constraints are going to be dis- transfer processes and the capacitors represent the heat capacity
cussed, including electricity transmission constraints and heat of the battery and TES device, respectively.
transfer constraints. The electricity transmission constraints are Applying Kirchhoff’s second law on the circuit derives:
generally described by the admittance matrix of the system, which T u;in þ T u;out
reflects the nodal admittance of the buses in the system [30]. TB  ¼ PT;TES;in ðRB þ RTES Þ þ PT;TES;out Ru : ð15Þ
2
Because the focus of this paper is to analyze the influence of bat-
tery and TES device on the integrated energy system, all nodal
admittance in the system is ignored in the following model, while
the heat transfer constraints in the battery and TES device are
concerned. Table 1
By applying the power flow method [31], each heat transfer The characteristic temperature difference, the heat flow rates and the thermal
resistance of the three heat transfer processes.
process in the system can be compared to its equivalent thermal
resistance. For example, for the heat transfer process in the battery, Heat transfer Characteristic Heat Thermal resistance
its characteristic temperature difference is the arithmetic average process temperature flow
difference
temperature difference between the battery and the heat conduct-
ing oil, DTB = TB  (TM1 + TM2)/2, and its thermal resistance is Battery-Oil TB = TB  PT,TES,in
(TM1 + TM2)/2
expressed as [25] 1 expððKAÞB =Goil Þ þ 1
RB ¼
2G expððKAÞB =Goil Þ  1
1 expððKAÞB =Goil Þ þ 1
RB ¼ ; ð11Þ
2Goil expððKAÞB =Goil Þ  1 Oil-PCM TTES = (TM1 + TM2)/ PT,TES,in
2  TPCM
where Goil represents the heat capacity rate of the heat conducting 1 expððKAÞTES =Goil Þ þ 1
RTES ¼
oil, i.e. the product of the mass flow rate m and the constant pres- 2G expððKAÞTES =Goil Þ  1
sure specific heat capacity cp of the heat conducting oil, Goil = moilcp,-
oil. K refers to the overall heat transfer coefficient, and A is the heat
PCM-water Tu = TPCM  PT,TES,out
(Tu,in + Tu,out)/2
transfer area in the battery. Then, the heat transfer rate in the bat- 1 expððKAÞu =Gu Þ þ 1
Ru ¼
tery is expressed as 2Gu expððKAÞu =Gu Þ  1

PT;TES;in ¼ ½T B  ðT M1 þ T M2 Þ=2=RB : ð12Þ

198 Q. Chen, T. Zhao / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 194–203

Fig. 4. The circuit diagram of three heat transfer processes.

Combining Eqs. (9), (10) and (13)–(15) derives the governing where PE,TP,max and PE,TP,min are the lower and upper limits. Mean-
equation of the thermal subsystem: while, due to the inertia of the steam turbine and the boiler, the
  ramp rate of the thermal power plant is constrained as follows:
T u;in þ T u;out
 dT B
TB  ¼ 1  gðsgnðPE;B ÞÞ PE;B  M B C B ðRB PE;TP ðt þ 1Þ  PE;TP ðtÞ
2 dt DE;TP;max 6 6 U E;TP;max ; ð19Þ
dx Dt E
þ RTES þ Ru Þ  M TES cRu : ð16Þ
dt where DE,TP,max and UE,TP,max are the maximum down and up ramp
Eq. (16) not only contains the power of the battery PE,B but also rates of the thermal power plant. The denotation t refers to the
includes the parameters of the heat subsystem including the tem- time. Similarly, for the CHP plant, the constraints of both power
peratures and the thermal resistances. Besides, it considers both and ramp rate are
thermal energy conservation and heat transfer constraints. Mean- PE;CHP;min 6 PE;CHP 6 PE;CHP;max ; ð20Þ
while, as listed in Table 1, two thermal resistances RB and RTES only
rely on the mass flow rate of the oil moil, and thus the total thermal P E;CHP ðt þ 1Þ  PE;CHP ðtÞ
resistance R is defined as follows: DE;CHP;max 6 6 U E;CHP;max ; ð21Þ
Dt E
R ¼ RB þ RTES ¼ Rðmoil Þ: ð17Þ where PE,CHP,max and PE,CHP,max are the lower and upper limits of the
Combining the heat transfer circuit and the electricity transmis- CHP plant, and DE,CHP,max and UE,CHP,max are maximum down and up
sion circuit together, the power flow model of the integrated ramp rates, respectively.
energy system is constructed as shown in Fig. 5. Two key nodes For the wind power plant, since the available wind power has
in the system are the battery and the CHP plant. They connect its ceiling varying with time, the wind power is constrained by
the electrical and thermal parts of the integrated system. 0 6 P E;W 6 PE;W;max ; ð22Þ
Apart from all the energy conversation and transmission con-
straints, some variables in the model are constrained by the oper- where PE,W,max represents the ceiling value of the wind power.
ation characteristics of each plant/device as well. For the thermal The battery is also constrained by its operation characteristic,
power plant, the electric power generation should satisfy the min- including the maximum charge/discharge power, the battery
imum and maximum limits, i.e. capacity and the operating temperature range:

PE;TP;min 6 P E;TP 6 PE;TP;max ; ð18Þ PE;B;max 6 PE;B;F 6 PE;B;max ; ð23Þ

Fig. 5. The power flow model of the integrated energy system.

 Q. Chen, T. Zhao / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 194–203 199

0 6 SB 6 SB;max ; ð24Þ Rð1Þ ¼    ¼ RðiÞ ¼    ¼ RðNÞ; ð33Þ

T B;min 6 T B 6 T B;max ; ð25Þ
where PE,B,max refers to the maximum charge/discharge power of
the battery, SB represents the electricity stored in the battery at a
certain moment, SB,max represents the battery capacity, and TB,min
and TB,max refer to battery temperature limits.
For the TES device, the thermal storage capacity is constrained
by the melting percentage of the material, i.e.
0 6 x 6 1; ð26Þ
where x refers to the melting percentage of the PCM.
For heat transfer processes, since the mass flow rate of the heat
conduction oil moil is limited by the pump installed on the tube,
and the mass flow rate falls to zero when the battery rests, i.e.
0 6 moil 6 mmax ; ð27Þ
where moil is the mass flow rate of the heat conduction oil, and mmax
is the maximum mass flow rate determined by the pump.
In addition, the system should return to its original state after a
computation cycle, which means the electricity stored in the bat-
tery, the thermal energy stored in the TES device and the battery
temperature satisfy periodical constraints
SB;initial ¼ SB;end ; ð28Þ
xinitial ¼ xend ; ð29Þ
T B;initial ¼ T B;end : ð30Þ
Eqs. (1)–(4) and (9)–(33) give the complete constraints set of
the system. In this system, four powers, PE,TP, PE,W, PE,CHP, PE,B, and
the mass flow rate of heat conducting oil, moil, can be determined
manually. The other variables in the system can then be deter-
mined by these parameters. Therefore, the decision variables of
this system are PE,TP, PE,W, PE,CHP, PE,B and moil. Noticing that the heat
capacity rate of oil Goil is proportional to moil, in following analysis
moil is replaced by Goil.
where R(i) refers to the thermal resistance at the ith time node in
the time interval DtH.
The energy conservation equation for the battery on each time
interval DtE is then:
PT;B ðiÞDt E ¼ PT;TES;in ðiÞDt E þ M B C B ðT B ði þ 1Þ  T B ðiÞÞ: ð34Þ
For the TES device, the energy conservation equation is
PT;TES;in ðiÞDt E  PT;TES;out ðiÞDtE ¼ M TES cðxði þ 1Þ  xðiÞÞ: ð35Þ
3.3. Optimization objective and parameters of the system
Since the purpose of energy storage system is usually designed
to promote the accommodation of the wind power, minimizing
wind curtailments is naturally determined as the optimization
objective
X
F ¼ min ½ðPE;W;max ðtÞ  PE;W ðtÞÞ þ eðPE;TP ðt þ 1Þ
t
i
þP E;TP ðt  1Þ  2PE;TP ðtÞÞ2 : ð36Þ
where a second term is introduced in the optimization objective. In
this term, e is a small constant, and the square part is designed to
make the result curve smoother. Therefore, the optimization result
is ensured to be unique.
Table 2 presents the prescribed parameters of the integrated
energy system, which will be used during optimization. Besides,
the variations of wind power ceiling, electric and heat loads in a
typical day are shown in Fig. 6.
This optimization problem is nonlinear considering its con-
straints, which is hard to solve directly. Therefore, two auxiliary
binary variables JS and JR are introduced as
J S ; J R ¼ 0 or 1; ð37Þ
J R þ J S ¼ 1; ð38Þ

3.2. Time scales of the system

Table 2
There are three major time scales in the power system simula- The prescribed parameters of the system.
tion: electromagnetic transient for electric-magnetic field simula- Thermal Plant PE,TP,max (MW) 700
tion (millisecond-microsecond), electromechanical transient for PE,TP,min (MW) 350
the mechanical state of the generator simulation (microsecond- DE,TP,max (MW min1) 18
UE,TP,max (MW min1) 18
second), and power flow calculation for long-term dynamic and
stable state simulation (minutes-hours) [32]. For peak shaving, CHP plant PE,CHP.max (MW) 210
PE,CHP,min (MW) 180
both the electric-magnetic field and the state of the generator
DE,CHP,max (MW min1) 13
are not needed to be considered. Therefore, the time interval is UE,CHP,max (MW min1) 13
chosen as the precision of load and wind power data, 15 min, Heat-power ratio c 1
which is denoted by DtE. The whole operation time period is then Percentage of heat load supplied by the CHP a 0.95
divided into M time intervals, Battery SB (MJ) 1.44  106
t ¼ M Dt E : ð31Þ gB 0.7
TB,min (°C) 290
Besides, due to the difference between electricity transmission TB,max (°C) 320
(KA)B (MW K1) 5
and heat transfer, it is not reasonable to change all electrical and
thermal variables in the same frequency. Electrical powers change TES device MTES (kg) 5  106
faster, while temperatures, mass flow rates, and heat transfer rates c (J kg1) 5  105
TTES (°C) 180
change slower. Therefore, a larger time interval, DtH, for thermal (KA)TES (MW K1) 5
powers is chosen, and the ratio of these two time intervals is Gmax (MW K1) 0.1
denoted by N User Tu,in 45
Dt H Tu,out 60
N¼ : ð32Þ
Dt E Time t (min) 1440
DtE (min) 15
During a time interval DtH, the mass flow rate of the oil does not DtH (min) 60
change. That is, the total thermal resistance R(moil) does not M 96
N 4
change,
200 Q. Chen, T. Zhao / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 194–203
Fig. 6. The variations of wind power ceiling, electric load and heat load in a typical
day.
Fig. 7. The variations of the wind power for two cases in a typical day.
which are used to indicate the operation mode of the battery. When
the battery stores electricity, PE,B > 0, JS = 1 and JR = 0. Instead, when
the battery releases electricity, PE,B < 0, JS = 0 and JR = 1. The sign
function in Eqs. (9) and (10) can be then eliminated and the original
nonlinear problem can be converted into a mixed integer linear pro-
gramming problem (MILP) [33–35]. The YALMIP toolbox [36] and
the CPLEX solver are applied to solve this MILP problem.
4. Optimization results and discussion
4.1. The operation mode in a typical day
Fig. 7 presents the variations of the wind power accommodated
into the power system, PE,W, in two cases. The first case is the orig-
inal system without battery nor TES device. The second case is the
system included the battery and the TES device. The wind curtail-
ment percentage reaches 40.61% in the first case as the green1 line
presents. When the heat generated by the battery supplies 5% of the
heat load, the wind curtailment percentage falls to 13.70% in the sec-
ond case. It is clear that due to the installation of the battery and the
TES device, the wind curtailments decreased. The battery shifts the
electricity on the time axis through storing and releasing electricity
and the TES device shifts heat on the time axis also. The energy shift
increases the flexibility of the energy system. That is, the integrated
1
For interpretation of color in Fig. 7, the reader is referred to the web version of
this article.
Fig. 8. The variations of the thermal power for two cases in a typical day.
energy system can effectively promote the accommodation of wind
power and collect the low-grade energy for future utilization.
Fig. 8 gives the electric power outputs of the thermal power
plant in the two cases. When the battery and TES device is
included, most of the time the power output is less than that in
the original case due to the increased wind power shown in
Fig. 6. However, from around 6 am to 8 am, the variation tendency
is reversed. In this period, the wind power decreases, the CHP
power also decreases due to the installation of the TES device,
while the electrical load increases. Therefore, the electric power
output of the thermal plant has to increase to keep the power bal-
ance. All in all, both the CHP and the thermal power plants
decrease their power outputs and consume less coal.
Fig. 9 shows the power of the battery and the heat capacity rate
of the heat conduction oil. The battery stores electricity from
around 7 pm to 7 am and releases electricity in the rest of the time.
In the night, the available wind power supply is sufficient but the
electricity load is quite low, and the battery stores wind power
instead of throwing wind power away. In the day time, the avail-
able wind power supply falls while the electricity load rises, the
battery releases the electricity it stores to satisfy power balance.
The heat capacity rate of the oil reaches its upper limit in most
time, while the battery power cannot reach its limit. That is, owing
to the given upper limit of the heat capacity rate of the oil, the bat-
tery power is limited. Second, it can be seen that the heat capacity
rate drops drastically when the battery switches from charging to
discharging or vice versa, which is due to the limit of the battery
temperature limit. Fig. 10 gives the variation of the battery temper-
ature in a typical day. At around 9 am and 4–6 pm, the battery tem-
perature reaches its minimum, which indicates the battery is
switching operation mode. During the switch processes, the bat-
tery power drops to zero first and generates much less heat than
the other time. To keep the battery remains in its temperature
range the heat transferred away must decrease simultaneously.
4.2. The influence of different time interval ratios
The results above are all derived from the condition that
DtE = 15 min and DtH = 60 min, and the time interval ratio N = 4.
Table 3 lists the wind curtailment percentages with different time
interval ratios. When the time interval ratio is small it has little
influence on the wind curtailment percentage, and when it is big
enough the whole problem becomes infeasible. Therefore, the time
interval ratio has a reasonable range for the system. When the time
interval ratio goes out of this range, the system fails due to limited
flexibility of the system.
 Q. Chen, T. Zhao / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 194–203 201

Fig. 9. The variations of the battery power and the heat capacity rate for in a typical day.

Fig. 10. The variations of the battery temperature in a typical day.

Fig. 11. The variations of the battery power for different time interval ratios.

Figs. 11 and 12 give the power of battery and the heat capacity
rate of oil with different time interval ratios, respectively. The bat-
tery power and the heat capacity rate have similar trends, i.e. the
battery charges in the night and discharges in the daytime, and
the heat capacity flow rate drops when the battery changes its
mode. As N decreases, the variations of both the battery power
and the heat capacity rate become smoother, which is beneficial
for the system control. Instead, if it is needed to reduce the alterna-
tion frequency of the heat capacity rate of oil, the time interval
ratio, N, can be larger as long as the system operates normally.

4.3. The maximum heat supply ability of a battery

For a practical system, the maximum battery power is usually

fixed. The question is how much heat can the battery supply at
most for a given battery. It is easy to find out that the battery
reaches its maximum heat generation rate when the battery works
at its maximum power and the heat generated can be transferred
away in time thus the temperature will not reach its limit. Fig. 12. The variations of the heat capacity rate of oil for different time interval
However, as shown in Fig. 9, the battery does not always reach ratios.

Table 3
The wind curtailment percentage against different time interval ratios.

Time interval ratio N 1 2 4 6 8 12

Wind Curtailment Percentage (%) 13.70 13.70 13.70 13.70 13.71 Infeasible
202 Q. Chen, T. Zhao / Applied Thermal Engineering 122 (2017) 194–203
its maximum power. In this case, the battery does not reach its
maximum heat generation rate. There are two aspects mainly
influence the heat generation rate of the battery. One is the heat
transfer ability from the battery and TES device, and the other is
the heat load the battery should satisfy.
The heat transfer ability from the battery and TES device is con-
trolled by the maximum mass flow rate of the heat conducting oil.
If the maximum mass flow rate is too small, the heat transfer abil-
ity is insufficient, and the heat generated by the battery cannot be
transferred away effectively. In this case, the battery will decrease
its power to keep its temperature in the safe range. On the other
hand, if the maximum mass flow rate is quite high, the heat trans-
fer ability will not be the obstacle anymore. In this case, the heat
generated from the battery has an upper bound, i.e. when the bat-
tery works at its maximum power all the time. The battery cannot
supply more heat than this bound, otherwise, it could not satisfy all
constraints. On the contrary, if the heat load is less than this bound,
the battery will not work under its maximum power, which means
some electricity storage/release potential of the battery is wasted.
Therefore, it can be concluded that the maximum heat supply
ability of the battery has an upper bound, which is mainly deter-
mined by the maximum mass flow rate of the heat conducting
oil mmax and the maximum power of the battery PE,B,max. When
the battery reaches this bound, the battery works with its maxi-
mum power.
5. Conclusions
Due to the stochastic intermittence and fluctuation, accommo-
dation of the wind and solar sources in power systems faces the
severe challenge, where the large-scale battery is a promising solu-
tion to improve the flexibility of power system and reduce the
wind and solar curtailments. However, the heat generated by bat-
teries during the operation processes is usually abandoned, which
decrease the energy efficiency. Therefore, a heat recovery and TES
subsystem are installed in the battery system in order to recover
the heat generated by the battery and satisfy a part of heat load
concurrently.
By applying the power flow method in heat transfer system
analysis together with the traditional power system analysis
method, the integrated electric and thermal energy system is mod-
eled and optimized to reduce wind curtailment. The optimized
results present that the heat recovery and TES subsystem could
supply a certain percentage of heat to residents by recovering
the generated heat in the battery and decrease the coal consump-
tion of both the CHP and the thermal power plants simultaneously.
For a typical day, the optimal operation strategies of the system
are (a) the battery charges in the night and discharges in the day-
time; (b) the mass flow rate of the heat conducting oil keeps high
in most time and drops to near zero when the battery switches
between charge and discharge. Furthermore, the alternation fre-
quency of the mass flow rate of the heat conducting oil has a lower
bound. When the mass flow rate alters too slow, the system cannot
operate normally. Instead, when the alternation frequency of the
mass flow rate is above the bound, it influences the system perfor-
mance slightly.
In summary, the heat generated by the battery, which will be
simply abandoned before, is collected, stored and finally supplied
to users, thus the coal consumption of the thermal power and
CHP plants is reduced effectively.
Acknowledgments
We thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China
(Grant No. 51422603), National Science and Technology Infrastruc-
ture Program (Grant No. 2015BAA01B03), the State Grid Corpora-
tion of China (SGTJ0000KXJS1500072), and the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51356001 and 51321002).
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