Solar energy is the green source with the widest potential and plays a vital role in developing energy all over the world. Human beings have been making use of solar energy as early as 7th century. Later on, due to the advancements in science and discoveries of alternative sources of energies - mostly non-renewable and fossil fuels, use of solar energy was found to be expensive and had comparatively poor performance than other energy sources. Since then more usage of non-renewable energy sources has been done than renewable energy sources. But the renewable energy sources are limited and are on the verge of depletion which made researchers to rethink about renewable energy options like solar energy, wind energy etc. The reason behind selecting this paper is that it provides insight on battery storage technologies and their integration on a small-scale level like residential and commercial structures.
The 5 C’s
The paper is of the analysis category as various simulations are done to check for better performance and financial feasibility of the battery storage systems. The need for storage of renewable energy and integrating it on a small level like residential areas forms the context of the paper. Based on the assumptions made, the results and conclusion appears to be true and correct. The paper contributes to the society as it provides more information and computational results which could be put to use in practice. The clarity of the paper both conceptually and linguistically is appreciable.
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Summary of paper
The paper starts with explaining the importance of managing the power from renewable energy sources and storing the energy in section 1. The changes in weather and also changes in climate over a period of 24 hours affect the production of electricity from renewable sources of energy. This leads to inadequate supply of energy. Intelligent grid technologies would be implemented in future which will put consumers in charge of their power consumption.
The second section highlights the need for integration of renewable energy from different perspectives like environmental, monetary, government participation and other organisations. The third section names various energy storage technologies but describes four types of battery storage technologies. Information about lead-acid batteries, Nickel-Cadmium batteries, Nickel metal Hydride batteries and the Lithium ion batteries is provided in this section.
In the fourth and fifth sections the performance of the four storage technologies are tested using Simulink by MATLAB. The parameters like nominal voltage, measured voltage, maximum power etc. were compared. For illustrating the financial and technical feasibility of PV system with batteries, HOMER modelling was done and the results of the analysis is described in table format.
Further discussion and conclusions are drawn in sections 6 and 7 respectively from the results obtained from the previous sections.
Critique of the paper
The paper is about assessing different battery storage systems for integration of renewable energy on a small scale. The author has made a good start of the paper by discussing the need for the study and assessment of the battery storage integration. The relevant findings of the existing systems has been mentioned, thus demonstrating a good example of literature review. A brief description of the method of analysis and results are given in the introduction. In the body of the paper, the need for the assessment from different perspectives is highlighted in detail. After this various energy storing technologies were described which makes the reader aware of the analysis in the later part of the paper. The use of easy and lucid language by the author makes it easy for the reader to grasp the information easily. In the Simulink assessment section, the battery is considered to operate in ideal conditions which might affect the performance in real because of the changes in temperature. Also, the simulation is done considering no charge controllers whereas the systems have the charge controller. Further, the data which is provided to the PV module is only of five days of a certain time of the year. The same data might not hold true for other times of the year. In the HOMER analysis, the results are derived assuming that the load requirement matches 99.9% with the PV system which might not be true in practice. Thus the results obtained may not be completely accurate. The results in the graph and the tables are thoroughly explained. The discussion clearly relates to the purpose of the research mentioned in the introduction. The conclusions were fairly drawn from the results that were obtained in the analysis. The assessment could be improved by considering some of the practical assumptions like variation in amount of sunlight in solar grids, geographical location of the systems etc.
Overall, the paper is well organised and the analysis and simulations are described in detail. The results are explained in a convincing manner. The information in the paper is reliable as it has been cited in more than 200 papers. There are many volumes and issues of the paper which means that the content is updated. The paper has a significant impact as the conclusions drawn from the computations and costing could be very useful in implementing the idea in reality.
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