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After the explanation of the services that will be tested with our innovative HESS, a brief description of the pilot sites selected for system validation is presented below.
Messina pilot (Italy)
The Messina site (Italy) was realized inside a redevelopment project of Fondo Saccà (a small and degraded area of the city of Messina). This intervention represents an exemplary case of recovering a portion of the urban fabric in a state of high urban degradation and social marginalization. This project was promoted by Fondazione di Comunità di Messina onlus under the Capacity Program. The redevelopment intervention involved an area of 2500 square meters in which new eco-sustainable buildings were realized. In particular, the buildings are conceived with high energy and thermal efficiency and provided with solar panels. They are equipped with home automation systems to further implement automatic actions and support the responsible use of energy. In collaboration with CNR-ITAE, Solidarity and Energy ESCo has studied and redefined the electricity distribution criteria for residential users, considering the social priorities of the users themselves. This objective is achieved through the development of an energy system able to monitor individual residential users, to manage the energy produced from RES (through battery storage) and to reformulate a new energy pricing procedure, fair and proportional to the social priorities of users. The system can maintain the energy supply even in the absence of the power grid supply (off-grid operation) according to a priority policy, which will take care of disadvantaged users. ESCo directly manages the production, storage and distribution system and billing to the end users, minimizing trade with the electricity grid and favouring the self-consumption of energy produced from RES. The system can apply a different tariff depending on the priorities and will adjust the maximum power set points available for each user, proportionally to the needs due to the user’s inconvenience. Demand side management is possible thanks to a direct control of the houses’ loads.
In this context the HYBRIS system will be inserted to enhance the performance of the overall energy infrastructure and offer new and more efficient services to the community. The presence of possible local sheddable loads could enable demand-response service scheduling. The HESS will operate in both grid-connected and island mode and specific test will investigate the grid forming and grid synchronization and re-connection. HYBRIS enables also to explore the possibility to offer ancillary services such as frequency regulation through the release of controlled value of active power.
Brasschaat pilot (Belgium)
The Belgian pilot site is located in Campus Coppens area. It includes among others 20+ mixed businesses companies. A part of them part is currently managed by “Quares”, a Park Management and Services Provider Company, and provides various aggregated services to the SME enterprises of the area.
The ambition of the Brasschaat town is to evolve towards a true sustainable livable environment and business park area, where to test advanced “green local energy community” concepts to improve the overall sustainability. This aligns very much with Quares who manages 10+ Belgian business parks and sees this request arriving more and more towards them. From the different business parks currently in scope of Quares this one was chosen because in Brasschaat there is a very good local government support.
The starting point for this project is “Pronails”, one of the companies operating in the business park. This is where the hybrid battery system will be installed, and the energy optimization will be performed. This business has existing solar panels and EV chargers with more EV charging stations planned for installation. The EV charging stations will contribute to the overall flexibility of the site, with smart charging being used to maximize the amount of green energy used to charge vehicles while also avoiding producing consumption peaks by charging too many vehicles at the same time. The installation of the HESS together with smart control will enhance self-consumption and peak management, while maximizing green energy consumption at the site. Therefore, it will contribute in reducing overall energy bill in the context of Belgian tariffs.
Tholen pilot (Netherlands)
The Dutch pilot will take place in Tholen at the border of Zeeland and North Brabant, in Netherlands, within a SME (Small and Medium sized Enterprise) Delta Glass factory. The use case application will be focused on the deployment of energy services inside the described context to allow small factory energy optimization and future LEC (Local Energy Community) possibility. Since a real HESS system isn’t available for this site, the HESS system will be simulated by Typhoon HIL to imitate a real HESS system. Delta Glass factory is a SME specialized in cast acrylic sheets production. The site includes a lab, an office and a glass production factory. This pilot will demonstrate how the hybrid energy storage systems developed within HYBRIS can be used to reduce costs and increase green energy consumption at the site. The site will be equipped with PV and 1 EV charger is also planned on the parking lot.
The target of the demonstration will be to achieve reduced costs and an increase overall sustainability, thanks to an optimized self-consumption. The simulation of the HESS will use real data from the site to make it as realistic as possible. Therefore, the HESS will be optimized for local green consumption, congestion peak avoidance (towards the DSO STEDIN) and trading optimization (EPEX spot). Improved grid balancing and resiliency at a better cost is the expected result towards the DSOs/TSO. The combination of slower and fast services on the battery are exactly the reason why the belief is that a novel hybrid battery solution (including novel software) will be much more valuable than current single purpose battery solutions.
The purpose of the pilot is also to demonstrate the business case for the novel HESS system in the context of SME, both in terms of net metering tariff and possibility to provide ancillary services towards the DSOs/TSO.
Furthermore, it will demonstrate the ability of a HIL device to faithfully emulate the behaviour of a HESS system, allowing a subsequent plug-and-play a real HESS with reduced cost of design.
Written by Davide Aloisio, Francesco Sergi and Giovanni Brunaccini from CNR-ITAE
