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Energy Procedia 105 (2017) 4458 – 4463

The 8th International Conference on Applied Energy – ICAE2016

Strategy for renewable energy storage in a dynamic

distributed generation system
Yu Luoa, Yixiang Shi*, a, Yi Zhenga, Zhongxue Gan*,b, Ningsheng Caia
a.
Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Thermal Engineering,
Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
b
ENN Science & Technology Development Co., Ltd, Langfang 065001, Hebei Province, China

Abstract

Renewable energy (RE) is expected to be the major part of the future energy. Presently, the intermittence and
fluctuation of RE lead to the limitation of its penetration. To solve this problem, energy storage device is in demand.
In this paper, the energy storage strategy was designed to improve the RE penetration and dynamic operation stability
in a distributed system coupling wind generators, internal combustion engine and RSOFC. By compromising the
relative deviation of power supply and demand, RE penetration, system efficiency and capacity requirement, the
strategy that no more than 36% of the maximum wind power output is directly supplied to users and the other is
stored by the reversible solid oxide fuel cell is optimal for the distributed system. This strategy can better utilize the
wind power and remarkable alleviate the wind curtailment problem.
© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Selection and/or
Peer-review peer-reviewofunder
under responsibility responsibility
the scientific of of
committee ICAE
the 8th International Conference on Applied Energy.

Keywords: Renewable energy penetration; Dynamic system simulation; Energy storage strategy; RSOFC; Li-ion battery

1. Introduction

Renewable energy (RE) is greatly developed worldwide due to its sustainability and cleanness.
Nevertheless, the characteristics of intermittence, fluctuation and dependence on the weather lead to the
difficulty in feeding into grid and improving the renewable energy penetration. The data published by
National Energy Administration of China showed the ratio of curtailed solar energy was 10% and the
ratio of curtailed wind energy reached 15% in 2015[1, 2]. With the prospect of future energy has been

Corresponding author. Tel.: +86-10-62789955; Fax: +86-10-62789955.

Email: shyx@tsinghua.edu.cn.
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86-316-2595905; Fax: +86-316-2595905.
Email: ganzhongxue@enn.cn.

1876-6102 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 8th International Conference on Applied Energy.
doi:10.1016/j.egypro.2017.03.946
 Yu Luo et al. / Energy Procedia 105 (2017) 4458 – 4463 4459

described as the “energy internet”, RE will play a major role in the future primary energy, which is
achieved by the super-large-scale distributed generation and energy storage systems[3, 4].
The dynamic simulation platform is an indispensable tool to study the behavior and optimal strategy in
a distributed renewable energy storage system. T. Senjyu et al.[5] proposed a distributed system coupling
diesel generator, fuel cell and aqua electrolyzer to use renewable energy in a small, isolated island.
Similar researches show pumped-hydro energy storage, compressed air energy storage, power-to-
gas/liquid (PtG/PtL, for gas/liquid fuels storage), CES, batteries, flywheels and SMES are available
energy storage technologies[6-12]. However, only pumped-hydro energy storage, compressed air energy
storage and gas/liquid fuels storage are alternative selections to seasonal energe storage[6-8]. PtG by
reversible solid oxide fuel cells (RSOFC) is a high-efficiency and economically feasible method [7],
which can also build a bidirectional connection between natural gas and electricity [4].

2. System configuration

Fig. 1. System configuration

Fig. 2. System platform in gPROMS

4460 Yu Luo et al. / Energy Procedia 105 (2017) 4458 – 4463

The distributed system considered in this paper consists of a wind generator, reversible solid oxide fuel
cells (RSOFC), an internal combustion engine (ICE), user loads, heat exchangers and other connection
components. Our previous papers have set up the models of RSOFC, heat exchanger and other connection
components that can be used in this study[13-15]. The wind generator and user loads can be set to be
given signals, such as random signal. The model of ICE is based on the experimental data from the
reference [16] and its dynamic behavior is refered to reference [5]. Consequently, the system
configuration was demonstrated in Fig. 1. The system was built in the commercial environment of
gPROMS, the established system platform is shown in Fig. 2.

3. Results and discussion

Eight cases were demonstrated to evaluate the different energy storage strategies in the considered
distributed system, based on the multi-factor analysis including the RE penetration φRE, system efficiency
ηtot, εmax and capacity requirement of the energy storage devices.
CASE 1: Wind curtailment mode. When Pwind≤0.4Pwind_max, wind generator supplied all power to the
user. When Pwind >0.4 Pwind_max, wind generator supplied only 40% of the maximum wind power to the
user and other power was curtailed. RSOFC just operated in SOFC mode to fill up the rest of the user
load.
CASE 2-7: Partial wind power was supplied to users and the other was stored by RSOEC (SOEC
mode). The limit of the wind power supplied to users was respectively 0 in CASE 2, 0.1Pwind_max in CASE
3, 0.2Pwind_max in CASE 4, 0.3Pwind_max in CASE 5, 0.4Pwind_max in CASE 6 and 0.5Pwind_max in CASE 7. The
rest of the user load was filled up by RSOFC (SOFC mode). Especially, CASE 2 was PtG mode,
representing all wind power was used to electrolyze H 2O/CO2; CASE 7 was the maximum wind
penetration mode, representing all wind power was directly sent to users. CASE 3-6 were called as the
PSPS mode (Partial power supplying to user and partial power stored).
Table 1 showed the φRE, ηtot, εmax and capacity requirement of the energy storage device in the eight
cases. All power is normalized so that the capacity requirement is dimensionless. In CASE7, although the
system exhibited the least capacity of RSOFC (0.62) and the highest φRE (56.4%) and ηtot (54.8%), while
sacrificing the power quality. The relative deviation of power supply and demand had a strong fluctuation
and εmax reached 8.34%, which may cause a great impact on the user loads. That’s why RE is hard to
penetrate more nowadays. Presently, wind curtailment mode is the common way to improve the power
quality of the grid. Here in the wind curtailment mode (CASE 1), the limitation of wind power output led
to a plenty of wind curtailed and limiting the φRE and ηtot. The wind energy was fully and better utilized in
CASE 2-6. In the PtG mode (CASE 2), the system exhibited the lowest εmax (0.57%) while φRE and ηtot
were slightly higher than the wind curtailment mode. This meant it’s unnecessary to ensure power quality
by wasting wind power, but utilizing wind by the PtG mode can obtain the power with much better
quality. However, the cycle efficiency loss of RSOFC limited the RE penetration and lowered system
efficiency and the required capacity of the RSOFC was also the largest (1.28, twice of that in CASE
1,6,7).
In the distributed system, the optimal strategy shouldn’t go to extremes but balance all the factors.
Therefore, CASE 3-6 represented the compromising strategies, in which the wind power was partially
used to electrolyze and partially directly supplied to users. Each key parameter in the PSPS mode was
among the corresponding ones of the PtG mode and the maximum wind penetration mode. According to
the capacity evaluation, the capacity requirement with the limited ratio of over 0.36 kept 0.62, which is
the least capacity requirement of all cases. That’s because the RSOFCs were allowed to operate partially
in SOEC mode and partially in SOFC mode. When the wind was weak, the RSOFC only operated in
SOFC mode and its capacity requirement was at most 0.62; when the wind was strong, the RSOFC
 Yu Luo et al. / Energy Procedia 105 (2017) 4458 – 4463 4461

should provide the power output in SOFC mode and absorb the power in SOEC mode in the meantime.
To balance all factors, the optimal limited ratio of the wind power supplied to users was chosen to be 0.36.
In this case, φRE was 54.6%, ηtot was 54.2% and εmax was 5.95%, which were all superior to those in the
wind curtailment mode. The power distribution in the optimized strategy is shown in Fig. 3. The power
output of ICE was fixed at 0.38. The wind power directly supplied to users was 0-0.44. The output power
of SOFC was 0.08-0.62. The power input of SOEC was varying from 0 to -0.79.

Table 1. RE penetration, ηtot, εmax and capacity requirement of CASE 1-8

CASE φRE ηtot εmax Capacity requirement

1 (Wind curtailment mode) 0.421 0.488 0.0672 0.62
2 (PtG mode) 0.421 0.494 0.0057 1.28
3 (10% PSPS mode) 0.467 0.511 0.0135 1.09
4 (20% PSPS mode) 0.505 0.526 0.0272 0.9
5 (30% PSPS mode) 0.534 0.538 0.0462 0.71
6 (40% PSPS mode) 0.554 0.545 0.0672 0.62
7 (maximum wind mode) 0.564 0.548 0.0834 0.62

Fig. 3. Power supply distribution in the considered time period

4. Conclusion
4462 Yu Luo et al. / Energy Procedia 105 (2017) 4458 – 4463

In this paper, the energy storage strategy was designed to improve the renewable energy (RE)
penetration and dynamic operation stability in a distributed system simulation platform coupling wind
generators, internal combustion engine and reversible solid oxide fuel cells (RSOFC).
Based on the multi-factor analysis of the maximum relative deviation of power supply and demand,
RE penetration, system efficiency and capacity requirement, different strategies was compared to
compromise the system power quality, efficiency, RE penetration, device cost and size. In consequence,
it’s the optimal strategy of the RE-natural-gas distributed system that no more than 36% of the maximum
renewable power was supplied to users and the other was stored by RSOFC. In the case, the RE
penetration reached 54.6% and system efficiency reached 54.2%. The maximum relative deviation of
power supply and demand is also lower than 6%, which is significantly superior to that in the wind
curtailment case. This strategy can better utilize the wind power and dramatically reduce the wind
curtailment problem.

Acknowledgements

The study support from Project 2014CB249201 supported by the National Basic Research Program of
China (973 Program), Projects 51276098 (National Natural Science Foundation of China, NSFC) and
Youth Foundation Program for Fundamental Scientific Research in Tsinghua University(221 Programe)
are greatly appreciated.

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physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences; 2008.

Yu Luo
PhD candidate in Department of Thermal Engineering, Tsinghua University. Yu
receive his BS in Department of Thermal Engineering from Tsinghua University in
2013, now he is carrying out a visiting program in Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. His research focuses on experimental and numerical analysis of high
temperature electrochemical conversion by solid oxide cell (SOC), including reaction
mechanisms, reactor design and optimization, and system analysis in both steady-
state and dynamic operations.

Yixiang Shi
Associate professor in Department of Thermal Engineering, Tsinghua University. Dr.
Shi received his BS/Ph.D in Thermal Engineering from Tsinghua University in
2003/2008, then carried out postdoctoral research in Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. He focuses on electrochemical energy conversion and storage, carbon
dioxide capture and utilization and distributed system dynamic simulation.

Yi Zheng
Master candidate in Department of Thermal Engineering, Tsinghua University. Yi
received his BS in department of Thermal Engineering from Tsinghua University in
2016. He focuses on numerical simulation of the distributed renewable energy
systems.