Identification of ESS Degradations Related to Their Uses in Micro-Grids: Application to a Building Lighting Network with VRLA Batteries

Abstract

This paper presents a study about power profiles of micro-grid with highly intermittent sources and their impacts on energy storage system (ESS). The first step of the work consists in generating the ESS power profiles thanks to a new optimal sizing algorithm. Our approach allows to size the ESS and the renewable energy sources (RES) using a power/energy considerations to generate charging and discharging profiles regardless ESS specifics parameters. In a second step, we review the potential damages on Valves Regulated Lead Acid Batteries (VRLAB). This technology has been chosen because it is the most used ESS in case of stationary applications for urban MG with RES integration. We propose some criterion to quantify the batteries stresses generated by MG working operations. Therefore, we give recommendations to enhance the VRLAB lifetime in both micro-grid design and energy management. Our method has been applied to the photovoltaic production and lighting network consumption profiles of the LAAS-CNRS building integrated photovoltaic. We compare four possible configurations of ESS and RES: two determined thanks to Pareto optimisation method and two critical cases corresponding to the minimal and the maximal values of ESS size into all the possible configuration tested.