Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Comerce (MITYC) of Spain. VI National Plan R+D+i: 2008-2011.
Institute of Technology and of Renewable Energies (ITER).
Several ITER departments
The ultimate goal of this project started in the year 2008 is to facilitate the penetration of RES in the electric system, which implies the need for a very high capacity accumulation system, reduce and mitigate the significant impact of the energy fluctuation of these type of energies on the operation of the electric grid; impact which will be greater, the higher the penetration of these renewable energies in the electrical system.
The project can be broken down into the following phases and tasks:
The tasks carried out during the year 2008 and so far of the year 2009, have been to study the state of art of the different existing technologies of storage, specially the new generation batteries, choice of the accumulation system that best suits this project and definition of the nominal power of the grid-connected inverter to be developed. Among the Technologies studied, the lead conventional batteries (Pb-acid) and nickel cadmium (Ni-Cd) stand out, as well as the vanadium slow batteries (VRB), the Sodium-sulfur batteries (NaS) and the ion-Lithium batteries (Li-Ion).
These last ones have been subject of choice as an energy accumulation system due to its cost, specific energy (Wh/kg), power density (W/m3) and future expectations that these Ion-Li offer. The nominal power of the inverter to be developed will be 1MW, likewise the storage power acquired will also be close to that value.
This project is a first step to evaluate capacities and costs of this type of storage systems for its subsequent larger-scale implementation, particularly in order to stabilize the stand-alone electrical grid systems such as the one in the Canary Islands.