Abstract

As the global transition from coal and natural gas power plants to solar and wind generators gains momentum, instead of solely determining the number of fossil fuel plants required to meet peak demand, the new paradigm is centered around finding effective ways to integrate energy storage solutions with solar and wind electricity, ensuring a reliable power supply throughout the days. Lithium-ion batteries (LiBs) have emerged as the predominant choice for stationary and diurnal energy storage applications as they exhibit higher efficiency than other battery types. The data reported by California Independent System Operator (CAISO) indicates a significant increase in battery utilization in recent years, where the usage of LiBs in energy storage power plants changed from ~ 100 MW for ancillary services in 2019 to ~ 1 GW of arbitrage allowing solar electricity to be used to power the grid after sunset starting in 2021. Understanding the performance of the new LiBs' technologies and identifying the associated losses is of prime importance in doing the modelings for the future grid. We used the most recent data on LiBs storage plants reported by Energy Information Administration (EIA) and quantified the real-world LiBs' efficiencies. Moreover, we proposed mathematical modeling for the calculated efficiencies as a function of the number of cycles that batteries experienced, trying to predict and quantify the batteries' idle losses. Given the information released by EIA, it is probably impossible to identify the losses separately. Nevertheless, our mathematical modeling gives insights into the existence of different losses.

Biography

Farzan ZareAfifi is pursuing a Ph.D. with a Master's along the way in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Merced. He joined the Sarah Kurtz research group in the Fall of 2021. His research interests are renewable and sustainable energies, energy storage, and energy transition. He is currently researching the role of energy storage in the future zero-carbon grid. He obtained his bachelor's degree in the Spring of 2020 from the University of Tehran, Iran.