Power Electronics: Enabling Integrated Battery Storage Systems towards 100% Renewable Energy Based Society

To enable 100% renewable generation where renewable energy-based electrical energy can be used anywhere and at any time, energy storage systems will be a very promising solution. According to the Department of Energy, revolutionary breakthroughs in electric energy storage will have a major impact on U.S. energy security, and the electrical grid and its resiliency. Solar and wind energy’s potential is limited by their intermittent nature, disreputability, scalability, and cost of energy storage. Nevertheless, both solar, wind energy and Li-ion batteries are projected to have a substantial cost reduction by year 2025 (Levelized Cost Of Electricity substantially less than 1c/kWh for solar energy and overall cost less than $50/kWh for storage). However, several technical barriers and difficulties still stand on its way to massive deployment due to its high cost and low safety issue. The session will try to cover several topics to discuss the possible solutions from perspective of technical views from new power devices level, battery management, power conversion to advanced grid interactions with battery support.
1) The system architecture of different power levels for Energy Storage Systems. With gradual mature of advanced WBG power devices and power ICs, three critical applications will be boomed: residential energy storage system, e-mobility storage, and utility-scale storage systems. Over 99% efficient AC/DC converters have been developed using discrete GaN HFETs operating at 1.5 MHz. Substantial cost reductions and power density improvements are expected to enable residential storage applications. To enable the emobility based society, advanced power electronics for extremely fast charging at 400 kW+ level will be possibly discussed for future 1000V Battery EVs (BEV) by using advanced high voltage SiC power devices. To enable a utility scale-storage system, high power SiC power electronics solution with high power density and high efficiency will be discussed in this session.
2) Battery Management. Fundamental electrochemical-thermal models for batteries will be covered in this discussion. Simplified equivalent circuit models (ECM) based on electrochemical-thermal modeling and extensive results from the various project testbeds will be covered. The interdisciplinary discussion will help power electronic researchers aware of possible performance-limiting factors due to aging through variable parameters and try to make battery more affordable and safe.
3) Advanced Grid Interactions with support of battery storage systems. This talk will focus on the grid resiliency features such as black start, grid voltage and frequency support, complete island operation, smooth transition between grid-tied mode and islanding operations, and a micro-grid operation with support of energy storage system.
4) New Wide bandgap devices(WBG) and their integration. Highly integrated and compact power electronics in a fundamentally new WBG Power IC will be discussed for interfacing battery storage system. Significant performance improvement in terms of size and cost reduction in WBG devices can be further achieved by integrating multiple WBG devices with gate driver, control, and protective circuits in the form of a monolithic power IC. However, WBG power IC technology is still in its infancy, and many technological barriers exist for interfacing battery system.

Session Chairs:

Issa Batarseh, University of Central Florida (UCF)

Haibing Hu, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Alex Q. Huang, University of Texas at Austin

 

Speakers:

Alex Q. Huang, University of Texas at Austin

Said Al-Halaj, All Cell Technologies LLC

Zhe Li, Tsinghua University

Amit Kumar Bhattacharjee & Issa Batarseh, University of Central Florida

Sudip K Mazumder, University of Illinois at Chicago