ELSA - Energy Local Storage Advanced system
Energy storage options are considered key enablers for the smart grid, providing required flexibility both at building and grid level. The project ELSA (Energy Local Storage Advanced system) addresses this demand by developing and trialling the integration of electrical storage, in the form of second-life batteries from electric vehicles, to support intelligent energy management solutions.
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Objectives
Integration of distributed small/medium size storage systems can allow operating distribution grids much more flexibly, thus realizing smart grid features like local demand-supply balancing, congestion relief, peak shaving and effective integration of renewable energy sources (RES). However, few technologically mature decentralized storage systems are commercially available today at affordable prices, while both viable business models and the underlying legal and regulatory framework are lagging behind. As an answer ELSA will implement and demonstrate an innovative solution by integrating low-cost second-life Li-Ion batteries and other direct and indirect storage options, including heat storage, with demand-side solutions as well as intermittent RES. The core idea is to consider Storage as a Service offered to building and district managers, for local energy management optimization, and to DSOs, for enhanced network operations. ELSA will adapt, build upon, and integrate close-to-mature (TRL>=5) storage technologies and related ICT-based energy management systems. This includes the management and control of local loads, generation, and individual or aggregated real or virtual storage resources, integrated to demand response, in buildings, districts and distribution grids.
Test site: E.ON Energy Research Center as microgrid
As one out of six test sites, the three buildings of E.ON ERC at RWTH Aachen (main building, test hall, SENSE building) will be set up in a microgrid scenario. In addition to existing solutions for electricity generation, heating and cooling, including geothermal storage, combined heat and power units, cold via open sorption process and roof-top solar panels, the main building will be equipped with second-life batteries to be included into its overall energy management concept. The complete system will be operated as a microgrid, also virtually including local wind generation, with the goal of efficient energy utilization as well as potential service offerings to the external grid.
RWTH role
In addition to the development and validation of the live test site providing a holistic experimentation facility for energy management optimization encompassing both thermal and electrical aspects, the institutes ACS and EBC will also contribute to cross-project tasks.
RWTH will support the definition of requirement as well as the development of the ICT solution both for the battery system and the overlay energy management system. The validation of the industrial system of second-life batteries will also be accomplished in collaboration with the project partners.
As major contribution to the evaluation of the concept, the institutes ACS and EBC will model the field trials enabling a smooth integration into the energy management system as well as its development in simulation environment. Since field trials are always limited in size, this activity will allow for scaling up the field test scenarios beyond the possibilities of real field trials, thus reinforcing the proof-of-concept analysis.
Announcements
On 12 to 14 February, the ELSA consortium presented its final results to the EU Commission, represented by Project Officer Dana Dutianu.
The bridge data management working group met in Brussels for its yearly meeting in the beginning of June. Stephan Gross participated and represented the ELSA project and the E.ON ERC.
The ELSA project represented by Stephan Gross participated in the H2020 Bridge Data Management Working Group meeting in Brussels. The group worked on the topic characterization of flexibility services and data handling restrictions.
After a second on-site check with the project partner Bouygues, 5 of 6 batteries at the Aachen trial site are operational and are tested in order to provide flexibility to the office building district at the EON ERC.
Prof. Monti, Michael Diekerhof and Nikolaus Wirtz attended the ELSA Board meeting in Brussels.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation
programme under grant agreement No 646125.