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A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "D: Energy Storage and Application".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 December 2019) | Viewed by 21464

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Prof. Dr. Philippe Poure

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Institut Jean Lamour (UMR7198), Université de Lorraine, Campus Artem - BP 50840, F-54511 Nancy, France
Interests: energy harvesting; solar energy; power and energy architectures; energy conversion and storage; energy conversion and efficiency; maximum power point tracking techniques; energy management; DC-DC conversion; operation under faulty conditions; prognostics and diagnostics; fault tolerant operation
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are inviting submissions to a Special Issue of the Energies journal on the subject area of “Solar Energy Harvesting, Storage and Application”. Solar energy harvesting for electrical power generation appears to be one of the best solutions for providing sufficient and clean electrical energy. Nevertheless, increasing the efficiency and reliability of PV systems is challenging. Thus, the associated PV modules, energy storage systems, MPPT techniques, DC–DC converters, and control methods are crucial in order to perform critical global targets in energy efficiency and fault tolerant operation.

Topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to, the following:

Materials for highly efficient solar cells;
PV systems: power and energy architectures, energy management, advanced control method under healthy and faulty conditions, and islanded PV systems;
Energy storage for PV systems: batteries, electrochemical capacitors, super capacitors, and hybrid energy storage;
Monitoring of aging and supervision of energy storage systems;
Power electronics interface for PV systems and associated storage: DC–DC conversion, DC–AC inverters, design and control of emerging converters topologies, fault tolerant operation and diagnosis, reliability, power quality, and power density;
Maximum power point tracking techniques;
PV systems modeling and control: modeling and control including energy storage, methodologies, and application cases, including safety critical operation.

Prof. Dr. Philippe Poure
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Solar energy harvesting and advanced materials for solar cells
Power and energy architectures for PV systems
Power electronics
DC–DC converters
Energy conversion and efficiency
Energy management
Energy storage systems
Maximum power point tracking techniques
Fault tolerant operation of PV systems
Efficient and reliable converters under faulty conditions

Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 5231 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Equivalent Two Switches and Single Switch Buck/Buck-Boost Circuits for Solar Energy Harvesting Systems

by Ehsan Jamshidpour, Slavisa Jovanovic and Philippe Poure

Energies 2020, 13(3), 583; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13030583 - 27 Jan 2020

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2894

Abstract

In this paper, a comparative analysis has been presented of two equivalent circuits of non-isolated buck/buck-boost converters under synchronous control, used in a stand-alone Photovoltaic-battery-load system. The first circuit consists of two cascaded buck and buck-boost classical converters with two controllable switches. The buck converter is used to extract the maximum power of the Photovoltaic source, and the buck-boost converter is applied for the output voltage level control. The second circuit consists of a proposed converter with a single controllable switch. In both cases, the switching frequency is used to track the maximum power point and the duty ratio controls the output voltage level. Selected simulation results and experimental tests confirm that the two conversion circuits have identical behavior under synchronous control. This study shows that the single switch converter has a lower size and cost, but it is limited in the possible control strategy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Solar Energy Harvesting, Storage and Application)

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20 pages, 8238 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Partial State-of-Charge Mitigation in Standalone Photovoltaic Hybrid Storage Systems

by Iván Sanz-Gorrachategui, Carlos Bernal Ruiz, Estanis Oyarbide Usabiaga, Antonio Bono Nuez, Sergio Jesús Artal Sevil, Erik Garayalde Pérez, Iosu Aizpuru Larrañaga and Jose María Canales Segade

Energies 2019, 12(22), 4393; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12224393 - 19 Nov 2019

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2419

Abstract

Energy Storage in photovoltaic installations has increased in popularity in recent years due to the improvement in solar panel technology and energy storage systems. In several places where the grid is not available, in remote isolated rural locations or developing countries, isolated photovoltaic installations are one of the main options to power DC micro-grids. In these scenarios, energy storage elements are mandatory due to the natural day-night cycles and low irradiation periods. Traditionally, lead-acid batteries have been responsible for this task, due to their availability and low cost. However, the intermittent features of the solar irradiance patterns and load demand, generate multiple shallow charge–discharge cycles or high power pulses, which worsen the performance of these batteries. Some Hybrid Energy Storage Systems (HESSs) have been reported in the literature to enhance the lifetime and power capabilities of these storage elements, but they are not intended to overcome the Partial State of Charge (PSoC) issue caused by daily cycles, which has an effect on the short and mid-term performance of the system. This paper studies the impact of the already proposed HESSs on PSoC operation, establishing the optimal hybrid ratios, and implementing them in a real installation with a satisfactory outcome. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Solar Energy Harvesting, Storage and Application)

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14 pages, 4061 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Solar Concentrator Consisting of Multiple Aspheric Reflectors

by Guobin Cao, Hua Qin, Rajan Ramachandran and Bo Liu

Energies 2019, 12(21), 4038; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12214038 - 23 Oct 2019

Viewed by 2674

Abstract

This paper presents an off-axis-focused solar concentrator system consisting of 190 aspheric reflectors, where the aperture radius of each reflector is 10 cm, and vertices of all reflectors are orderly arranged in the same plane. The aspheric parameters controlling the curvature of the reflectors are determined using coordinate transformations and the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. Based on these aspheric parameters, the light distribution of focal plane was calculated by the ray tracing method. The analyses show that the designed concentrator system has a spot radius of less than 1 cm and the concentration ratio over 3300:1 is achieved using only one reflection. The design results have been verified with the optical design software Zemax. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Solar Energy Harvesting, Storage and Application)

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14 pages, 3436 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Experimental Study on Temperature Distribution and Heat Losses of a Molten Salt Heat Storage Tank

by Xiaoming Zhang, Yuting Wu, Chongfang Ma, Qiang Meng, Xiao Hu and Cenyu Yang

Energies 2019, 12(10), 1943; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12101943 - 21 May 2019

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 3359

Abstract

Two-tank molten salt heat storage systems are considered to be the most mature thermal storage technology in solar thermal power plants. As the key part of the system, the thermal performance of molten salt tanks is of great importance. An experimental thermal storage system with a new type of molten salt as a thermal energy storage medium has been built to investigate the temperature distribution of molten salt inside the tank during the cooling process from 550 °C to 180 °C. The temperature distribution of the salt was obtained, which reveals that temperature stratification appears at the bottom of the tank within the height of 200 mm. The position, with the maximum temperature difference of 16.1 °C, is at the lower edges of the molten salt storage tank. The temperature distribution was also measured to deepen our understanding of the insulation foundation, which shows that the maximum temperature appears at the middle upper part of the foundation and decreases radially. The heat losses of the molten salt tank were calculated by the classical equation, from which it was found that the heat loss decreases from 3.65 kWh to 1.82 kWh as the temperature of the molten salt drops from 550 °C to 310 °C. The effect of temperature stratification on the heat losses of the tank’s bottom was also analyzed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Solar Energy Harvesting, Storage and Application)

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14 pages, 4664 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Estimating Solar Irradiance on Tilted Surface with Arbitrary Orientations and Tilt Angles

by Hsu-Yung Cheng, Chih-Chang Yu, Kuo-Chang Hsu, Chi-Chang Chan, Mei-Hui Tseng and Chih-Lung Lin

Energies 2019, 12(8), 1427; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12081427 - 13 Apr 2019

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3669

Abstract

Photovoltaics modules are usually installed with a tilt angle to improve performance and to avoid water or dust accumulation. However, measured irradiance data on inclined surfaces are rarely available, since installing pyranometers with various tilt angles induces high costs. Estimating inclined irradiance of arbitrary orientations and tilt angles is important because the installation orientations and tilt angles might be different at different sites. The goal of this work is to propose a unified transfer model to obtain inclined solar irradiance of arbitrary tilt angles and orientations. Artificial neural networks (ANN) were utilized to construct the transfer model to estimate the differences between the horizontal irradiance and the inclined irradiance. Compared to ANNs that estimate the inclined irradiance directly, the experimental results have shown that the proposed ANNs with differential outputs can substantially improve the estimation accuracy. Moreover, the trained model can successfully estimate inclined irradiance with tilt angles and orientations not included in the training data. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Solar Energy Harvesting, Storage and Application)

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14 pages, 4466 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Thermo-Fluid Dynamic Effects of the Radial Location of the Baffle Installed in a Solar Updraft Tower

by Saerom Kim, Seungjin Lee and Joong Yull Park

Energies 2019, 12(7), 1340; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12071340 - 08 Apr 2019

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3392

Abstract

The solar updraft tower (SUT) is a renewable power generation system that uses the natural convection phenomenon of the ground’s air heated by solar radiation. The baffle is a thermo-fluid dynamic structure that improves the heat exchange efficiency and has been recently reported to be a useful tool to increase the output of the SUT. However, one of the less well-known issues is the relationship between the thermo-fluid dynamic characteristics of the flow in the collector of the SUT and the installation location of the baffle and how this affects the power output and SUT efficiency. In this study, the positive and negative thermo-fluid dynamic effects of the baffle, which vary depending on the installation location, are quantitatively analyzed, and the best location is predicted where the overall kinetic power generated by the SUT is maximized. The target SUT model consists of a chimney (12 m height and 0.25 m diameter) and a collector (1 m height and 10 m diameter), and a total of eight model cases are calculated. The results confirm that the kinetic power is lower or higher than that of the control model having no baffle, depending on the baffle installation location. When the position of the baffle is 4.5 m from the center, the increase in kinetic power is maximized by 8.43%. Two important conclusions are that the baffle should interfere minimally with the progress of the main flow into the chimney, generating kinetic power, and at the same time, the baffle should isolate the inner recirculating flow in order to accumulate the heat in the collector so that the natural convection strength is maximized. The perspective gained from the resulting data is useful for SUT design and for pursuing a higher efficiency in the future. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Solar Energy Harvesting, Storage and Application)

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12 pages, 5100 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Experimental Implementation of a Flexible PV Power Control Mechanism in a DC Microgrid

by Hongwei Wu, Fabrice Locment and Manuela Sechilariu

Energies 2019, 12(7), 1233; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12071233 - 31 Mar 2019

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2350

Abstract

The intermittent and highly variable nature of photovoltaic (PV) sources is always the major obstacle to the growth of their deployment. Research work is increasingly demonstrating that PV generation should not only be maximized but also flexible based on the system requirements. This article presents a simple and flexible PV control mechanism, which can seamlessly switch between maximum power point tracking mode and power limiting mode. It can be integrated into a DC microgrid for efficient energy management. The proposed mechanism has two configurations that respectively converge to a lower and a higher PV panel voltage to perform PV shedding. The experimental validation carried out in this study shows that this control can effectively adjust the PV generation despite some physical constraints. The limitations of the control mechanism and the energy efficiency are also analyzed. It can be concluded that each configuration can be particularly useful depending on the different application scenarios. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Solar Energy Harvesting, Storage and Application)

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