Developing a Bottom Up Cost Calculation Model and Methodology for Thermal Storage Applications

Abstract: Increasing storage for energy is one of the most important challenges today to overcome in order to enable higher penetration of renewable energy in the existing energy systems. Thermal storage is one category of energy storage that has been successfully demonstrated in a number of engineering projects and is showing promising potential in the future. However, a technology cannot be widespread if it is not economically feasible and sustainable in the long run. Bottom up cost analysis can be used to assess economic viability of a technology. For newer technologies, the top-down cost calculation is not always possible due to the limited amount of data. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the best practices in performing bottom up cost calculation and to propose a methodology with the purpose of enabling it to be implemented over thermal energy storage bottom up economic evaluations. To achieve this, two proven applications, molten salt storage for concentrated solar power and ice thermal storage for building cooling, were examined as the basis of the bottom up state of the art calculation models. It was found that in the ice storage case, the models were often done in a hybrid bottom up-top down approach which limits a fully detailed cost analysis. Instead these are referred as case studies instead because of the few elements needed in their calculation. The constructed specialized models and case studies are then compared against other external sources to validate the proposed economic analysis procedure. The numerical results showed some discrepancies when compared to external resources. A compilation of a general bottom up cost model with detailed step by step model to perform a bottom up calculation for thermal storages is finally proposed in this work.