Abstract

Electricity is the key to the proper functioning of modern human society. Ever-increasing electricity consumption gives rise to recent regulations and significant endeavors to improve the energy efficiency in all kinds of human activity from manufacturing to commerce, from transportation to digital communication, from entertainment to laptops and portable devices. An important technology for helping reduce energy consumption is the ability to store any excess electrical energy for long periods of time and efficiently retrieve the stored energy.

The design and management of electrical energy storage systems is the focus of the present paper, which starts off by reviewing and comparing various types of electrical energy storage elements in terms of various metrics of interest ranging from power and energy density to output power rating and from self-leakage rate to cost per unit of stored energy, and from life cycle of the storage element to the efficiency of the charge/discharge cycle. Next the paper reviews various energy storage systems while motivating the need for a hybrid energy storage system comprised of heterogeneous types of energy storage elements organized in a hierarchical manner so as to hide the weaknesses of each storage element while eliciting their strengths. The paper continues with a detailed explanation of key challenges that one faces when dealing with the optimal design and runtime management of a hybrid energy storage system targeting some specific application scenario; for example, grid-scale energy management, household peak power shaving, mobile platform power saving, and more. A survey of some existing solutions to these problems is also included.

Computer-Aided Design and Optimization of Hybrid Energy Storage Systems

Computer-Aided Design and Optimization of Hybrid Energy Storage Systems covers a wide range of topics related to the computer-aided design and runtime management of Hybrid Energy Storage Systems (HESS). As electrical energy consumption increases and power generation operating reserve margins becomes tighter, the need for high-performance yet cost-effective energy storage system (ESS) is rising. Hybrid ESS (HESS) is an emerging technology that builds a high-performance and cost-effective ESS with currently available energy storage element technologies. Design and operation of the HESS is far more complex than those for homogeneous ESS because of the heterogeneity of the energy storage elements. Various benefits of HESS, such as high power/energy density, low cost, high cycle efficiency, and long cycle life, cannot be achieved unless judicious optimizations are performed during design and operation.

Computer-Aided Design and Optimization of Hybrid Energy Storage Systems provides an extensive survey of research work and results on key aspects of HESS, including system architecture, design optimization, and applications. It covers the basics of HESS, starting from the energy storage element technologies and homogeneous ESS to the architecture, optimization schemes, and applications of HESS in comparison with homogeneous ESS.

Computer-Aided Design and Optimization of Hybrid Energy Storage Systems provides the reader with a comprehensive primer on the wide variety of technologies, metrics, and systems related to HESS.