Techno-economic analysis of mobile battery storage systems to utilize curtailed wind energy in Germany for off-grid applications

Abstract: The increasing share of renewable energy especially wind energy leads to increased share of unpredictable and varying energy into the grid. This leads to congestion in the grid which ultimately results in wind curtailment. In Germany in 2015 alone more than 4000 GWh of wind energy was curtailed. On the other hand, off grid energy requirements for event industry especially concerts and festivals, rely heavily on diesel generators to fulfill their power requirements. This thesis investigates a unique use case for the mobile storage application. The batteries are used to utilize the curtailed wind energy for off-grid applications like festivals and concerts in Germany. The batteries are charged at the wind farm during the duration of curtailment and once they are fully charged, the batteries are transported to the location of concert or an event to provide clean energy. The batteries or storage system used for this case have a capacity of 1.5 MWh and the whole system is constructed in a standard shipping container to allow convenient transportation. According to the findings of this study, the proposed use case can lead to a significant CO2 emission reduction, a single storage system could save up to about 8.4 million kg of CO2, at the events and festivals. Furthermore, it could help in renewable energy integration by providing clean wind energy, that is otherwise curtailed, to festivals and concerts. This study identifies a wind farm with most curtailed energy in Germany with total curtailment duration accounting for about 32% of the time in the year 2017. The technical model, simulated in MATALB/Simulink, successfully charged the battery storage system without any bottleneck. The levelized cost of storage was found to be in comparison with the levelized cost of diesel generators. A single storage system has an ability save up to 8.4 million kg of CO2 emissions. The study further proposes policy suggestions to promote such innovative use case.