High-Voltage Grid Connected Energy Storage Systems

Competitive advantage

• Novel energy storage technologies that can be customised based on industry/customer specifications, allowing rapid introduction into the market
• Ability to conduct rapid prototyping and real-time verification of advanced power electronic concepts using Opal RT/RTDS, provide fast verification and quick adoption by industry for mass production
• World-class power hardware-in-the-loop capabilities to enable testing at full power

Impact

• From small-scale to large-scale, power electronics is the enabling technology for integration of energy storage systems (ESS) to the grid.

Successful applications

• A cascaded boost inverter-based battery ESS with several advantages over a cascaded H-bridge ESS:
  • Lower number of series connected modules
  • Ability to reduce the second-order harmonic ripple component in the battery current without additional hardware components
  • No input voltage balancing is required
  • Generates a sinusoidal output voltage

Capabilities and facilities

• Hardware-in-the-loop simulation for rapid assessment of control techniques
• Hardware testing capability up to 50kVA, 1kV, 400A
• Arbin battery and supercapacitor tester with environmental chamber