According to Professor Sergey Kharitonov, the head of the Institute of Power Electronics (IPE), NSTU NETI, its scientists are developing the first Russian energy storage unit for the Arctic. Now they are working at mathematical simulation of the device's operation processes and conducting some field testing. The first prototype can be created in 2021.
"The Arctic has special requirements for energy storage units. First, electrical batteries must be protected from low temperatures. For this purpose, we are designing a special system of thermal battery pack insulation and heating to work during the period of energy storage. Heating will take no more than 1-3 % of the unit's power. During operation, the energy storage unit heats itself because of electrochemical processes. Then, the heating will be automatically turned off", says Sergey Kharitonov. The energy storage system will be designed for temperatures up to 60 degrees below zero. Another requirement of the Arctic is increased reliability of the unit. "The Arctic storage facility is located at a huge distance from the manufacturer or service center, and there are many hundreds of kilometers of swamps between them. If it breaks, no one will have time to fix it quickly", says Sergey Kharitonov. Therefore, a triple reliability resource is designed for the developed sample, all systems are repeatedly duplicated, and a modular concept is used to reduce the risk of failure. "In fact, we develop the product according to the same standards that are applied in the space industry, and use the hardware protection technologies that had been developed during the work at power supply systems for Russian spacecraft", comments Sergey Kharitonov. Recently, IPE, NSTU NETI engineers have developed and successfully implemented several modern power supply systems for domestic aerospace objects that have an increased energy efficiency and fairly good weight and size parameters. The Institute’s specialists are one of the leading Russian developers in this field.
They suggest that perspective energy store units will be used to power remote settlements of the Far North as part of hybrid solar-diesel or wind-diesel power stations. The units will automatically store excess energy and supply it to the external power grid when needed.
Notably, the first Russian energy storage units which had been developed by the scientists of NSTU NETI and manufactured by the engineers of the Energy Storage Systems company (ESS, the Rusnano project) started operating in the Hevel hybrid power plants in Tuva in the autumn of 2019. According to preliminary estimates, there was 30% diesel fuel saving owing to the use of these units.
And at the end of February, Novosibirsk engineers from the ESS company and the Liotech plant (Rusnano project) launched the most powerful energy storage units in Russia, which had also been developed at NSTU NETI.