Location of the demonstration site

Sunshine Shiaolin Village, Sunlin District, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Overview of the demonstration

Sunshine Shiaolin Village is built for the relocation of the survivors of the Shiaolin disaster by Typhoon Morakot. There is abundant sunshine all year round and very good for solar power generation at the village. However, the village uses the same Taipower feeder with the nearby Daai Village and hundreds of homes there have been equipped with the solar photoelectric system, and the installation capacity for renewable energy has reached the feeder’s upper limit. Hence, new photovoltaic system installations can not get permission in the Shiaolin village.

Fifteen families of Shiaolin Village joined this demonstration project, each has a Home Energy Storage Systems (HESS) installed at their backyard, and photovoltaic (PV) panels installed at their roof top. The grid-connected HESS generates electricity for the family, and store the excessive energy into its storage module. The HESS would not feedback the power to the grid, and not to induce difficulty for the stability of the grid. The stored renewable energy can be released to reduce the loading to the grid during peak hours, even at the nighttime. A Community Energy Storage System (CESS) monitors the operation of the fifteen HESS, and connects the power lines with the eight sets of HESS. The CESS will extract energy from a HESS, when its storage module is full, to completely use the capability of the PV panels. Several HESS reorganize the battery formerly used in EV, the techniques and benefits of utilization of these second use of batteries are also investigated.

Participators and their responsibilities

• National Chung Shan Institute of Science & Technology (System Design, Energy Management)

• Chung-Hsin Electric and Machinery Manufacturing Corp (Home Energy Storage System)
• Delta Electronics (Community Energy Storage System)
• Yulon Energy (Second-use of Li-Battery)
• Masterhold Int’ (Battery Package, Battery Management System)
• Uniergy Eng. (Photovoltaic System Integration)
• Ecolohas Energy Tech. (Photovoltaic System Integration)

Introduction to demonstration site

Goal of demonstration

The goal of Shiaolin Village Demonstration Project is to integrate storage module into photovoltaic (PV) renewable energy system and manage to supply reliable power to families and community, at a lower overall cost. Some tasks have been set as following:

(1)   Considering the user’s power usage habit, the time pricing information and the weather forecasting data, to store excessive renewable energy during the day time, and to provide power for the peak time of the night.

(2)   Storing renewable energy whenever possible, even during power outage, and providing reliable power for the families and the community.

(3)   Maximizing the usability of the renewable energy generation capability installed.

(4)   To demonstrate local electricity generation for local use, and no feedback renewable energy to the grid, to help lifting the limitation for renewable energy generation facilities to connect to the grid.

Demonstration systems, equipment, and functions

Only fifteen families of Shiaolin Village have been selected to join this demonstration project. Each of these families has a Home Energy Storage System (HESS) set installed at their backyard, and twelve photovoltaic (PV) panels installed at their roof top.

Most of the members of the families in Shiaolin Village are studying or working out of home during the daytime. Hence, power consumption during the daytime is much lower than that of the night. The HESS can store the excessive PV power generation daytime, and release those stored energy for the family during the night.

The HESS would not feedback the power to the grid, and so not to induce any possible trouble to the grid. The stored energy can then release, so as to reduce the home loading to the grid during peak hours, day time or night time.

Each of the grid-connected HESS will generate power, following the amount needed by the family, sending power to the back of the Taipower’s meter of the family, and store the excessive power from the PV panels into the energy storage module. From the view point of the grid, the loading of the family with the HESS could be almost constant and nearly zero.

Currently most of the PV facilities in Taiwan do not have storage capability. They can generate power and sell to the grid, but, for safety reason, they cannot generate output power should natural disaster occurs and causes blackout. However, the HESS will cut off the connection to the grid, should the grid failed. The HESS will then work autonomously, storing as much as possible the energy from the PV modules and supplying power continuously for the family to use.

A CESS is installed to monitor the operations of the fifteen HESS. The CESS has eight sets of power line connected to the eight of the fifteen sets of HESS. When the CESS detects the storage module of a HESS has been fully charged by its PV modules and still some more solar energy to come, the CESS will extract energy from that HESS and store that into the storage module of CESS. The PV modules of that HESS can then recharge its storage module with maximum power available from our sun.

Demonstration features and focal points

1.Hundreds of homes in the nearby Daai Village have been equipped with the solar photoelectric system. Because the total output capacity has reached the limit of the Taipower output feeder capacity, solar photoelectric systems cannot be installed in Shiaolin Village, which uses the same feeder line. Due to current limitation by Taipower renewable energy grid-tied capacity specification, more solar panel installation is not allowed. This team used the electricity storage technology developed for the homes and the community to resolve the instability associated with renewable energy and the limitation of the installation capacity of renewable energy equipment for power feeder, while continuing to conduct the operation validation of the renewable electricity storage system. The installation of the photovoltaic system in Shiaolin Village demonstrates the goal of energy used generated locally or "On-site Renewable Generation", and the excessive electricity can be feed back to the Taipower system during non-solar-peak hours, or “Feed Back To the Grid On-Demand”.

2.The EMS (energy management system), within the CESS, developed by the team, controls the power flow between the families, the energy storage container, and the community center. The EMS fully utilize the data from BMS (battery management system) to maximize the performance of the batteries within the energy storage container, and the operation data of the fifteen HESS to make the best use the power generating capability of the PV panels.

3.The majority of the current photovoltaic systems in Taiwan are without energy storage capability, and they feed back power to the grid instantly when generating. However, should the nature disaster causes the power outages to happen, the people live under the PV panels, like those at Daai Village, will still have no power to use even during sunny day. Both of the HESS and CESS will keep on supplying emergency electricity, as long as the sun will shine for some period of time.

Possible service and cooperation items

Energy storage systems can be important for families, business center, factories, or the locations where stable electricity supply is crucial. However, the home energy storage and community energy storage industry has not yet taken shape, and the relevant business owners lack a practical verification platform for the real-life operation test of the developing products. This has resulted in difficulties in products’ promotion and marketing. Shiaolin Village demonstration site can be a verification platform, and would help driving the development of the renewable energy industry for homes and communities.

The establishment of Shiaolin Village demonstration site is not only an extension of our previous multi-point grid-tied network electric supply operation model at Kinmen's Dongkeng Community, but also adding the demonstration of excessive renewable energy storage, and the feedback to the grid on-demand. If large number of the HESS could work together, either to release energy or to consume power, it would be beneficial to the capacity and the stability of the grid.

We believe the grid is on the beginning of a revolution from centralized fossil fuel system to many distributed renewable systems. Each distributed system can be an energy user at one time, and be an energy supplier at the other time. The energy storage module would be the norm, and existing in most of the users. We feel honor to have chance working in this field in partial fulfillment of our environmental responsibility, and hope more people could come to join these important works to bring a better future for our children, and the generations to come.

Some Photos of the Demonstration site

Aerial view of the whole demonstration site, which includes the CESS and the fifteen homes join the project, each with one HESS installed at their backyard and PV panels installed on top of their roof.

Fifteen homes in the village join this project, each with one HESS installed at their backyard.(Two HESS shown in this photo)

Fifteen homes in the village join this project, each with twelve PV panels installed on top of its roof.

The CESS has control and storage modules inside the container and twelve PV panels installed on its top.