The role of energy storage in energy communities

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Volume Title

Insinööritieteiden korkeakoulu | Master's thesis

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Date

2022-10-10

Department

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Environomical Pathways for Sustainable Energy Systems

Language

en

Pages

53

Series

Abstract

Under the context of climate change, renewable energy systems combined with smart grid solution are in urgent need. The European Union (EU) introduced a new concept of energy community in 2019. Through community-scale participation, the energy communities could play a vital role in accelerating the sustainable energy transition. With the recent skyrocketing energy price in Europe, the renewable energy like solar power become more attractive to the public. Therefore, growth in decentralized genera-tion system could be expected in the near future, which benefits the development of energy communities. Community energy storage (CES), an energy storage system at the local level, helps coordinate the user’s needs and the intermittent generation. In this thesis, different energy storage technologies and configurations of CES are illustrated. In addition, case studies on previous CES projects are conducted. Simulations for the battery CES in Finland are conducted to study the different user scenarios. Residential buildings, teaching buildings and student dormitories are taken as three potential energy community for the simulation. Under the simulated conditions, it is shown that the battery could increase the utilization on solar power. In terms of economic benefit, the decrease in electricity bills is affected by the match level between consumption and storage capacity. The impact of battery integration can be presented in the changes on electricity bills and visualized through figures of energy flux. The study helped explore the role of energy storage in energy communi-ties. The CES could shift the load and accommodate the needs of local communities, while the performance depends on the consumption pattern and the applied logic of the storage system.

Description

Supervisor

Santasalo-Aarnio, Annukka

Thesis advisor

Chiu, Justin

Keywords

energy community, community energy storage, battery energy storage system, distributed energy storage

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