Baseline experimental and potential economic performance of a sodium-nickel-chloride battery integrated with wind turbines and the electricity grid

As the penetration rate of grid integrated wind energy converters continues to increase, the inherentlyfluctuating generation is becoming difficulty to match with loads. Grid-scale energy storage is recognized as akey emerging technology in this sector, and can serve diverse functions such as arbitrage, peak-shaving, andfrequency regulation. Among storage technologies, batteries have several technical advantages such as i)bidirectional electricity, ii) high charge and discharge power ramp rates, and iii) high round-trip energyefficiency. Sodium-nickel-chloride batteries are the latest market entrant for grid-scale storage. While themanufacturer provides basic specifications, the technical performance and economic feasibility while operatingin an application has yet to be fully explored.The Wind Energy Institute of Canada has purchased the first large-scale sodium-nickel-chloride battery inCanada to conduct experimental techno-economic evaluation of this new technology, with an objective toinform and stimulate Canadian industry uptake of energy storage. This project proposes baseline experimentalperformance characterization of the battery while subject to common operating modes. This includes power,energy, and efficiency as a function of state-of-charge, temperature, and time. The findings of this study willprovide industry the first application specific research results and be used to establish a larger collaborativeresearch program that investigates performance in detail over a diverse range of electricity services.