Intelligent Storage
Making Backup Solutions Work for You
Everyone has heard of Lithium-Ion batteries, like the ones in your car or your laptop, but there are actually many types of storage including:
- Lithium-Ion
- Lead Acid
- Flow Batteries (Vanadium Flow, Iron Flow, Bromide and Sodium)
- Mechanical (Pumped Hydro-Flywheel etc.)
- Electrostatic (Super-Capacitor)
Want to learn more about storage? Check out our Primer on Storage.
Energy storage considerations for different uses:
There are several factors that must be balanced to meet your particular energy storage needs. Those considerations typically break down into the complexity of where it will be used. Click below for discussions on considerations for the following customers.
Residential
Energy storage for the home store electrical energy, typically produced onsite with solar or wind, for later consumption.
Learn More
Microgrid / Commercial
Microgrids are small scale electrical grids that group interconnected load, distributed energy resources (solar, wind, or backup generation) together as a single entity that can interact with the larger grid.
Learn More
Grid Scale/Utility
Grid-scale storage projects tied to renewable generation or not bring new challenges to design. We work closely with you to develop a holistic and adaptable system that delivers economic value across a wide range of use cases.
Learn More
Residential
Energy storage for the home store electrical energy, typically produced onsite with solar or wind, for later consumption.
In the industry, they are also called “Battery Energy Storage Systems” BESS, a broader term that covers a wider range of ways to store energy is called “Energy Storage Systems” or ESS’s. The heart of a residential-sized system is often lithium-ion or lead-acid but sometimes newer residential-sized flow batteries or electrostatic energy storage like supercapacitors.
Included in your residential storage software will be a system to convert the direct current (DC) power in the ESS to the alternating current (AC) used in your house. This is called an inverter. There are also devices to handle the charging and discharging of the energy storage and often intelligent software <link to products page -gateway/dashboard>, like that built by Introspective Systems that manage the use of power within the home. Those systems can help you use your power efficiently and prioritize using your onsite energy generation, storage, and important loads.
Combined, these systems can virtually eliminate blackouts due to utility grid outages, or you can be entirely off-grid and not rely on the utility at all. Choosing the right system for your home requires some information like the size of your onsite generation (if any), the types and sizes of the loads that you want to support. How many loads you can live without in an outage and how long you want to maintain your access to power. As an example:
Homeowner, Elizabeth Smith, has a 2,000 sq. foot house that she wants to be able to keep power for a full day because her power supplier has many long outages. Elizabeth has a whole-house heat pump and only a few critical loads like her refrigerator and because she works from home her computer and internet. We would first calculate what her critical loads are, and including the heat pump, this totals 4 kW of power. This sounds like a lot, but most of the time, they don’t all run at the same time. We would then estimate how often they would run on the worse day. Because we have a heat pump, in the winter this might be 50% of the time. So, on average, she would use 2kW per hour for a 24-hour day or 48 kWh per day.
We then calculate the size of the Inverter based upon the usage of all of her loads. In this case, she only has a few LED lights, and that totals another 1kW. So, she needs an inverter that can output to her loads five kWs.
Elizabeth also has an 8 kW solar array that she installed a few years ago that on an average day in the winter produces 20 kWh/day but as much as 35 kWh. To keep the high priority items running during an average day, she needs about 28 kWh of storage before the power goes out to keep her loads running. There may be other considerations such as access to a generator or if her refrigerator is one of the extra efficient models or she has a wood stove that can cover some of the coldest nights. But this is the general way we would size a system.
Your Home can have Safe and Energy Efficient Independent Power 24/7.
Microgrid / Commercial
Microgrids are small scale electrical grids that group interconnected load, distributed energy resources (solar, wind, or backup generation) together as a single entity that can interact with the larger grid.
A microgrid can either be fully islanded or connect or disconnect when required based upon conditions.
Today, many remote locations need to rely on expensive diesel generation, which comes at great cost and negative environmental impact. Microgrids have long served these remote communities, but now with the addition of renewable generation and Energy Storage Systems (ESS), they can become more environmentally friendly. The renewable generation with energy storage can reduce the need to use fossil fuel generation.
But, microgrids are not just for the remote community but can be used for Industrial and Commercial applications providing a way to become more independent of the grid with increased reliability and resilience. These applications include critical manufacturing facilities, hospitals, and governmental buildings. By combining energy storage into the microgrid, great efficiency can be obtained, increasing the reliability and resilience of the entire system. When you add intelligent management of selected loads like in our Isle au Haut microgrid, the overall system can be less costly and more resource-efficient. As an example, by adding Energy Storage and Demand-side management using our Dynamic Grid Control Technology, our customers can often see a further 15 to 20% reduction in energy costs above just adding renewable generation.
Your Company or Community can have Save and Energy Efficient Independent Power 24/7
Each microgrid is different with unique environmental, engineering, and financial conditions that impact the design. Introspective Systems has developed proprietary software and methods that can optimize your next microgrid project. If you are out of the United States we encourage you to connect with one of our partners to help design your next microgrid.
If you want to get started today contact us.
Grid Scale / Utility
Grid-scale storage projects tied to renewable generation or not bring new challenges to design. We work closely with you to develop a holistic and adaptable system that delivers economic value across a wide range of use cases.
Energy storage solutions:
- Can deploy at many scales and any location and connected to the grid infrastructure
- Can be deployed with any combination of generation sources from renewables to multiple combinations of renewables
- With our supercapacitor ESS from Kilowatt Labs, they are long-term assets measured in decades due to the very long cycle life
- Enables deferment of transmission and distribution (T&D) investments in Non-Wires alternatives
We provide intelligent and adaptive controls that learn the conditions they are placed in. These controls make integration of Energy Storage easier, allowing our customers to make more money quicker. Our state-of-the-art machine learning drives our proprietary software controls that support:
- Renewable integration
- Peak shaving
- Load shifting
- Demand response
- Microgrids
- Frequency regulation