Dr. Ujjwol Tamrakar, an Electrical Engineer in the Analytics & Controls area of the Sandia Energy Storage program at Sandia National Laboratories, was appointed Associate Editor for the IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy (OAJPE), a leading journal in the field of power and energy systems.

IEEE OAJPE is technical journal containing articles focusing on the development, planning, design, construction, maintenance, installation, and operation of equipment, structures, and power systems. This includes aspects of safe, sustainable, economic, and reliable conversion, generation, transmission, distribution, storage, and usage of electric energy, including its measurement and control. As an associate editor beginning April 21, 2024, Ujjwol will be responsible for managing the peer review of manuscripts submitted to the journal and upheld high quality of scientific technical publication.

Henry Guan and Waylon Clark, members of the Sandia Energy Storage Demonstrations Projects team, along with Dr. Ray Byrne, Sandia Energy Storage Technology and Systems Department Manager, attended the ribbon cutting ceremony on Friday, August 16, 2024, for the Vermont Electric Cooperative/Green Mountain Power North Troy Battery Energy Storage Demonstration Project. Also in attendance was Dr. Imre Gyuk, Chief Scientist for the DOE Office of Electricity, Energy Storage Division. Both Dr. Byrne and Dr. Gyuk spoke at the ceremony about the importance of the project to Sandia and DOE respectively.

The project was a collective effort between Green Mountain Power and the Vermont Electric Cooperative and in partnership with Sandia’s Energy Storage Demonstrations Program and DOE-OE’s Energy Storage Division. The project cost over $5M, with $2M coming from DOE through the Sandia Demonstrations program. This project is significant as it will demonstrate how behind-the-meter energy storage can be beneficial at the transmission grid level.

The battery will allow renewables (i.e. the Kingdom Community Wind project) connected to the grid to continue to operate in conditions that would normally require the renewables to be curtailed or turned off. The battery system will also have the benefit of using the stored energy to reduce system peak demand on the ISO New England and Vermont system grids, with these benefits directly accruing to Vermont retail customers.

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Electricity (OE), Energy Storage Division.

Further reading:

Vermont Electric and Green Mountain Power launch new large-scale battery in North Troy

EVLO puts into operation first battery energy project in the US in Troy, Vermont

EVLO, Vermont utilities team up on unique BESS

Charlie Vartanian, a member of the Sandia National Laboratories Energy Storage program, presented at the EUCI webinar “Grid Enhancing Technologies (GETs) Fundamentals, held July 29-30, 2024. Charlie presented and moderated the panel “GETs Attributes & Grid Applications.” The panel assembled by Charlie included speakers from ISO-New England and Southern California Edison.

This EUCI webinar provided a comprehensive treatment of GETs – the hardware and software technologies that increase the capacity, efficiency, and/or reliability of the transmission grid installed on existing transmission infrastructure to give operators more situational awareness and control over the grid.

Charlie’s presentation featured BESS as one of the broader sets of GETs technologies. GETs have attracted renewed FERC and DOE interest in context of maximizing the utilization of the existing power grid while preparing the grid for a high-renewables future. While the recently awarded DOE funding opportunity for GETs demonstrations focused on improvement of existing transmission capacity via dynamic line rating technology, Charlie and other speakers at the EUCI webinar shared information and insights on the wider range of grid-improving GETs, including BESS and Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS).

Socializing BESS as an impactful advanced grid technology, or ‘GETs’, will assist the industry’s continued exploration of GETs for grid applications, and ultimately consumer benefit.  Current DOE-funded GETs activities are featured at Grid Enhancing Technologies (GETs) – Idaho National Laboratory.  The vision of applying BESS combined with advanced inverters and controls to increase renewables penetration is also supportive of the  DOE’s Energy Storage Grand Challenge.

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Electricity (OE), Energy Storage Division.

Members of the Sandia National Laboratories Energy Storage program participated as co-authors and co-instructors for a tutorial on the IEEE 1547 Distributed Energy Resources Interconnection Standard at the 2024 IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting, July 21-25, 2024, in Seattle, WA. This tutorial was organized by IEEE Standards Committee 21 which manages the set of IEEE 1547 Standards and related guides (including IEEE 1547.9-2018 guide for applying 1547 to energy storage and the IEEE 1547.4 guide for applying IEEE 1547 to microgrids).

Sandia representatives Mike Ropp and Charlie Vartanian provided class content and instructed on subtopics covering interconnection of energy storage, and interconnection of microgrids. Charlie also co-chaired the overall one-day tutorial along with Jens Boemer of EPRI. The full tutorial presentation is available at the IEEE PES Resource Center (free to PES members, cost to others).

Mike Ropp is also leading an IEEE standards development project to update IEEE’s 1547.4 guide for interconnecting microgrids.  More information on this active IEEE project is at https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/1547.4/3532/.

In supporting IEEE, Sandia staff leverage and promote ES R&D learning and resources, including providing content and resources for creation of new IEEE standards for energy storage. The IEEE is also a productive community for technical information-exchange, and socializing broader DOE initiatives including the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy Long Duration Storage Shot.

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Electricity (OE), Energy Storage Division.

Dr. Atri Bera and Dr. Cody Newlun, electrical engineers in the Analytics & Controls area of the Sandia National Laboratories Energy Storage program, chaired and organized a panel at the 2024 IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) General Meeting in Seattle, WA. The panel session, held July 23, 2024, was titled “Role of Energy Storage to Support Reliability, Resilience, and Decarbonization of the Power Grid: Current State, Challenges, and Best Practices.” Dr. Bera was the session chair, while Dr. Newlun gave a presentation titled “Capacity Expansion Planning Modeling Considering Long-term Decarbonization Goals & the Role of Energy Storage.” Other panelists included Mani Vadari of Modern Grid Solutions, Peggy Ip of Electric Power Research Institute, Armando Figueroa Acevedo of Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), and Ahmed Mohamed of Université Grenoble Alpes.

Other areas of panel topic discussions included:

• Power grid undergoing massive transition to achieve decarbonization
• Integration of renewable energy resources increasing at a fast pace
• Variability associated with renewable resources increases uncertainty in planning and operation of grid
• Energy storage provides a solution since it can shift energy over time
• Challenges of planning and operation of the grid with energy storage

States and territories across North America are enacting and enforcing an increasing number of policies to fight climate change, mandating utilities to replace fossil-fueled generation with renewable energy resources (RERs) to achieve grid decarbonization. While RERs will help move toward a decarbonized power system, the inclusion of vast quantities of these resources coupled with an expanding threat landscape poses several reliability and resilience challenges to power system planners due to their variability and intermittency.

Energy storage systems (ESS) can alleviate some of these challenges posed by the RERs and threats. However, there still exists significant barriers in modeling, integrating, and deploying ESSs to support reliability, resilience, and grid decarbonization. This panel discussed the best practices, state-of-the-art approaches, and key challenges to the planning and operations of the grid with ESS, including critical topics such as planning for resilience, reliability, recovery, enhanced resource adequacy, and capacity accreditation techniques.

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Electricity (OE), Energy Storage Division.

On June 5, 2024, two members of the Safety & Reliability thrust in the Sandia Energy Storage program gave invited presentations at the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) Engineering Solutions Symposium in Phoenix, Arizona. The focus of the symposium was “Progress with Li-Ion Battery Fire Safety: Engineering Solutions to Mobility and Storage Hazards.

Dr. John Hewson provided a talk on Understanding, Predicting, and Mitigating Cell-to-Cell Cascading Failure in Lithium-ion Battery Modules. Dr. Hewson gave an overview of some of the phenomena observed in cascading failure of lithium-ion batteries, and discussed what it takes to predict cascading propagation and how safer systems might be designed.

Dr. Loraine Torres-Castro presented on Early Detection of Li-Ion Battery Thermal Runaway Using Commercial Diagnostic Technologies. Dr. Torres-Castro discussed the use of rapid electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) coupled with gas sensing technology as diagnostics to monitor cells and packs for failure markers during thermal and electrical abuse. Identifying diagnostic tools that pinpoint failure markers with ample time to intervene is crucial for minimizing the consequences of failure.

This forum featured speakers involved in the cutting edge of battery safety research, created a tie between the developers of energy storage systems and the fire protection engineering community together, along with participation from first responders. The forum addressed system engineering tradeoffs in these energy storage systems.

The SFPE is the leading professional society for fire protection engineers who are involved in designing energy storage system installations with reduced risks.

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Electricity (OE), Energy Storage Division.

A team of researchers from the City College of New York and Sandia National Laboratories (Contact: Timothy N. Lambert) examined the impact of different acetate-based super-concentrated (or “water-in-salt”) electrolytes on zinc electrochemical performance at currents and material utilizations of practical relevance to industry (0.3-8 mA/cm2 and ~20 mAh/cm2 respectively). Data was collected to understand the fundamental thermodynamics and electrochemical rate-limiting-steps of the technology. Their results revealed that water solvation is not the reason for water-in-salt electrolyte stability but is rather due to a solid-electrolyte-interface (SEI) layer. This SEI layer also becomes the major limitation to practical battery charge/discharge rates. The team also explored strategies to overcome this hurdle, along with various cathode technologies for this electrolyte. The results were presented in an article titled “Electrochemical and Cycle Analysis of Water-in-Salt K-Acetate Electrolyte Zn-Ion Batteries Under Commercially-Relevant Conditions” and were published in the Journal of Electrochemical Society on July 15, 2024.

Decarbonization of national-scale electrical grids requires massive deployment of energy storage, a leading option for which is electrochemical-based batteries. For widespread adoption of grid-scale batteries to succeed, improvements to battery state-of-the-art are necessary in terms of affordability and safety. Toward this goal, this work researched aqueous electrolyte zinc-ion rechargeable batteries due to their low-cost materials, lack of thermal runaway risk, and inherent non-flammability. The major hurdle for aqueous electrolytes to overcome is lower energy density compared to the leading Li-ion technologies, due to the narrow stability window of aqueous electrolyte.

This research explored the use of a super-concentrated (or “water-in-salt”) aqueous electrolyte to expand the voltage window of operation. Their results showed encouraging results that may help pave the development pathway toward creating safe, low-cost, high-performance batteries of the future. The team of researchers included:

• Damon E. Turney, CUNY Energy Institute, City University of New York
• Debayon Dutta, CUNY Energy Institute, City University of New York
• Sanjoy Banerjee, CUNY Energy Institute, City University of New York
• Timothy N. Lambert, Sandia National Laboratories, Department of Photovoltaics and Materials Technology and the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies
• Nelson S. Bell, Sandia National Laboratories, Advanced Materials Laboratory

D. Turney, D. Dutta, S. Banerjee, T.N. Lambert, N.S. Bell “Electrochemical and Cycle Analysis of Water-in-Salt K-Acetate Electrolyte Zn-Ion Batteries Under Commercially-Relevant Conditions” J. Electrochem. Soc. 171 070525 (2024) DOI: 10.1149/1945-7111/ad5769.

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Electricity (OE), Energy Storage Division. This work was performed, in part, at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, an Office of Science User Facility operated for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science.

During the 2024 International Symposium on Power Electronics, Electrical Drives, Automation, and Motion (SPEEDAM), held in Ischia, Italy from June 19-21, 2024, several research papers funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Electricity Energy Storage Division were presented. These papers addressed critical challenges and advancements in grid energy storage solutions, battery state estimation, microgrid stability, and anomaly detection in lithium-ion battery cells. These researchers presenting on the DOE-funded work included:

• Dr. Raymond Byrne, Sandia National Laboratories Energy Storage Technology and Systems program manager, co-chaired two paper sessions and presented a paper on grid reliability and the role of energy storage.
• Dr. Rodrigo Trevizan, electrical engineer in the Sandia National Laboratories Energy Storage program, presented a paper that introduced a method for adaptive battery state estimation.
• Dr. Victoria O’Brien, electrical engineer in the Sandia National Laboratories Energy Storage program, compared online model-based anomaly detection methods. Read more about Dr. O’Brien’s presentation here.
• Dr. Valerio de Angelis, systems lead in the Sandia National Laboratories Power Electronics and Energy Conversion Systems department, presented a paper on a modular prototype of hybrid storage technologies for grid applications.
• Dr. Reinaldo Tonkoski, professor at the Technical University of Munich, presented papers co-authored by Sandians on integrated voltage and frequency support in microgrids and frequency security index-based state of health monitoring.

The presentations at the 2024 SPEEDAM conference provided valuable insights into the future of energy storage, microgrid stability, and battery management. The research papers highlighted advancements in solid-state transformers, battery state estimation, microgrid control, and anomaly detection, all of which are crucial for the development of reliable and efficient energy storage systems. These contributions have the potential to significantly impact the stability, reliability, and safety of future smart grids and microgrids, as well as the performance and lifespan of lithium-ion battery cells. The findings presented at the conference contribute to the ongoing efforts in advancing energy storage technologies and optimizing their integration into the electric grid.

In the 2024 SPEEDAM conference, researchers from 30 countries presented over 200 research papers divided in oral and poster sessions. The conference served as a platform for researchers and industry experts to exchange knowledge and foster collaborations in these critical areas.

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Electricity (OE), Energy Storage Division.

Citations

R.H. Byrne, A. Bera, T.A. Nguyen “Reliability of the Future Smart Grid and the Role of Energy Storage” in Proceedings of the 2024 International Symposium on Power Electronics, Electrical Drives, Automation and Motion (SPEEDAM), Ischia, Italy, June 2024.

R.D. Trevizan, V.A. O’Brien, V.S. Rao “Adaptive Battery State Estimation Considering Input Noise Compensation” in Proceedings of the 2024 International Symposium on Power Electronics, Electrical Drives, Automation and Motion (SPEEDAM), Ischia, Italy, June 2024.

N. Bhujel, A. Rai, U. Tamrakar, D. Hummels, and R. Tonkoski “Integrated Voltage and Frequency Support in Microgrids Using Droop and Model Predictive Control with Energy Storage Systems” in Proceedings of the 2024 International Symposium on Power Electronics, Electrical Drives, Automation and Motion (SPEEDAM), Ischia, Italy, June 2024.

A. Ray, U. Tamrakar, N. Bhujel, D. Hummels, R.H. Byrne, R. Tonkoski “Frequency Security Index-Based State of Health Monitoring of a Microgrid using Energy Storage Systems” in Proceedings of the 2024 International Symposium on Power Electronics, Electrical Drives, Automation and Motion (SPEEDAM), Ischia, Italy, June 2024.

V.A. O’Brien and R.D. Trevizan “A Comparison of Online Model-Based Anomaly Detection Methods for a Lithium-Ion Battery Cell” in Proceedings of the 2024 International Symposium on Power Electronics, Electrical Drives, Automation and Motion (SPEEDAM), Ischia, Italy, June 2024.

O. Dutta, A. Dow, J. Mueller, R. Wauneka, and V. de Angelis “A Modular Prototype of Hybrid Storage Technologies for Grid Applications” in Proceedings of the 2024 International Symposium on Power Electronics, Electrical Drives, Automation and Motion (SPEEDAM), Ischia, Italy, June 2024.

On June 19, 2024, Victoria O’Brien, an Electrical Engineer in the Sandia National Laboratories Energy Storage program,presented the results of the paper entitled “A Comparison of Online Model-Based Anomaly Detection Methods for a Lithium-Ion Battery Cell” at the 2024 International Symposium on Power Electronics, Electrical Drives, Automation, and Motion (SPEEDAM), in Ischia, Italy. The paper, authored by Victoria O’Brien and Rodrigo Trevizan, compared the ability of four anomaly detection methods to detect bias anomalies corrupting the voltage sensor of a battery cell. The study found a recursive, statistics-based cumulative sum algorithm to be the most effective anomaly detector due to its detection speed, accuracy, and ability to classify the bias of the anomaly as positive or negative.

Sensor anomaly detection is a critically important issue in battery energy storage system safe operation, as battery management systems equipped with estimation functionalities could be corrupted by sensor anomalies. Improper estimation has been found to cause battery degradation, equipment malfunctions, and thermal events. The research in this paper compared four methods that could be deployed in battery management systems to detect sensor anomalies, which is a critical first step in mitigating the damage from these hazardous events. The researchers found the Cumulative Sum Method to be the best option of the four methods studied to detect anomalies distorting voltage measurements on a Lithium-ion battery cell.

The 27th International SPEEDAM was a large, diverse conference with over 200 attendees originating from more than 30 countries. The paper, “A Comparison of Online Model-Based Anomaly Detection Methods for a Lithium-Ion Battery Cell,” was presented in the special session Advances in Grid Energy Storage Solutions.

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Electricity (OE), Energy Storage Division.

Dr. Babu Chalamala, a Senior Scientist for Sandia National Laboratories, was appointed as the founding chair of the TC2: Technical Committee on Grid Interfaces for the IEEE Transportation Electrification Council. Dr. Chalamala’s chairmanship became effective June 18, 2024.

The objective of this committee is to reach across IEEE Societies to foster awareness, communicate about, and coordinate efforts concerning essential interfaces between electric, vehicles (EVs) and the electric power grid. These interfaces include direct and indirect connections for charge/discharge purposes as well as any requisite stationary or mobile support infrastructure.

The IEEE Transportation Electrification Council (TEC) coordinates activities throughout the IEEE in the growing field of electrification across transportation domains, including advances in electric and hybrid cars, more-electric ships and aircraft, rail systems, personal transport, and the motive, storage, power grid, electronic intelligence, and control technologies that make them possible.