Abstract
Renewable energies are often subject to stochastic resources and daily cycles. Energy storage systems are consequently applied to provide a solution for the mismatch between power production possibility and its utilization period. In this study, a solar integrated thermo-electric energy storage (S-TEES) is analyzed both from an economic and environmental point of view. The analyzed power plant with energy storage includes three main cycles, a supercritical CO2 power cycle, a heat pump and a refrigeration cycle, indirectly connected by sensible heat storages. The hot reservoir is pressurized water at 120/160 °C, while the cold reservoir is a mixture of water and ethylene glycol, maintained at −10/−20 °C. Additionally, the power cycle’s evaporator section rests on a solar-heated intermediate temperature (95/40 °C) heat reservoir. Exergo-economic and exergo-environmental analyses are performed to identify the most critical components of the system and to obtain the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), as well as the environmental indicators of the system. Both economic and environmental analyses revealed that solar energy converting devices are burdened with the highest impact indicators. According to the results of exergo-economic analysis, it turned out that average annual LCOE of S-TEES can be more than two times higher than the regular electricity prices. However, the true features of the S-TEES system should be only fully assessed if the economic results are balanced with environmental analysis. Life cycle assessment (LCA) revealed that the proposed S-TEES system has about two times lower environmental impact than referential hydrogen storage systems compared in the study.
Highlights
The correct management of electric grids is being challenged by the widespread utilization of renewable energy sources (RES) [1]
The proposed thermo-electric energy storage (TEES) configuration has been introduced in a previous work [32], which dealt with the exergo-economic analysis of the proposed system
The manuscript deals with the impact assessment of a solar TEES system by the means of exergo-economic and exergo-environmental analysis
Summary
The correct management of electric grids is being challenged by the widespread utilization of renewable energy sources (RES) [1]. This is due to the unsteady behavior of the variable renewable energies (VREs), which have the characteristic of being highly stochastic (wind), or dependent on daily cycles (solar). The problem is approached with several measures, and among the others, energy storage represents an option that will certainly need to be used to support high market penetration of RES. Each solution holds specific performance characteristics, which favors or hinders the selection of one technology over the other.
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