Optimization of seasonal storage for community-level energy systems: status and needs

Abstract

The status and needs relating to the optimal design of community seasonal energy storage are reported. Thermal energy storage research has often focused on technology development and integration into buildings, but little emphasis has been placed on the most advantageous use of thermal storage in community energy systems. Depending on the composition and characteristics of a community, the most appropriate community thermal storage may differ from that for a single building. District energy systems usually link thermal users to cold supplies and/or heat supplies (e.g., solar thermal energy, geothermal energy from ground-source heat pumps or geothermal hot zones, industrial waste heat, thermal energy from cogeneration or trigeneration). It is demonstrated that the optimal integration of these technologies can be enhanced through the use of appropriate seasonal thermal energy storage and that community-level seasonal storage can facilitate the development of smart net-zero energy buildings and yield efficiency, economic and environmental benefits. Issues that need to be resolved to allow optimal solutions to be attained are described. Advanced tools are required for modeling, simulation, analysis, improvement, design and optimization, which incorporate advanced methods like exergy analysis. The most appropriate scale, number and type (e.g., sensible, latent, thermochemical) of thermal storages in a community need to be better assessed, and the appropriate time duration capacities for each determined in an optimal manner. This is particularly important since a combination of short-, medium-and long-term storage is sometimes required to yield the most benefits from community energy systems.

Alternative and sustainable heat production for drinking water needs in a subarctic climate (Nunavik, Canada): Borehole thermal energy storage to reduce fossil fuel dependency in off-grid communities

“…Still others carried out life-cycle cost analyses of integrating seasonal storage into district heating networks by taking into account economic and environmental boundary conditions (e.g. [20,40]), or by focussing on the most appropriate type, scale and number [41] or size of the storage [42] for optimal integration into community energy systems. Renewable energy production of both electricity and heat appears feasible in the Arctic, but energy storage remains the most important and common problem among all intermittent renewable resources.…”

Thermal/Cooling Energy on Local Energy Communities: A Critical Review

“…Thermal storage, in a seasonal model, was examined for a community level system also by Koohi S. et al Their novel study concluded in underlining the necessity of seasonal storage for the advancement of the energy transition. In this study, it was stated that in many community cases, a mix of long and short term storage solutions might be investigated as the technology is still under improvement [26]. The same conclusion was reached by Acheilas I. et al, who assessed a decision support tool for district heating from geothermal sources in existing cities.…”

“…Field of Study/Main Contributions [22,23,27,30,31,[43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50] • District heating/multigeneration systems/local energy [24,29,[51][52][53][54][55][56] • District heating/bidirectional heat grids [28,47,57,58] • Heating pipeline/distributed energy resources [12,25,26,[59][60][61] • Seasonal storage/multi-energy/combined electrical thermal…”

What Makes Decentralised Energy Storage Schemes Successful? An Assessment Incorporating Stakeholder Perspectives

“…DES can take the form of either electrical or thermal energy storage. Thermal storage could be particularly useful to address the challenge of decarbonising heating and cooling [16], however in this work we focus on electricity storage and its ability to support the integration of distributed renewable energy sources in towns and cities. In the UK, the market for domestic-scale electricity storage technologies has developed rapidly over the last few years.…”