Battery Energy Storage: An Automated System for the Simulation of Real Cycles in Domestic Renewable Applications

In the last decades, the use of renewable energy solutions (RES) has considerably increased in various fields, including the industrial, commercial, and public sectors as well as the domestic ones. Since the RES relies on natural resources for energy generation, which are generally unpredictable and strongly dependent on weather, season and year, the choice of the more effective energy storage system (ESS) plays a significant role in the application of domestic renewable energy technologies. On this basis, the impact of the ESS on the optimal use of domestic RES is widely studied in the literature in terms of technologies, mathematical models and energy markets, aiming to find the optimal battery size and chemical composition and the more efficient home energy management (HEM). The lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are considered one of the most promising electrochemical energy storage approaches. In this context, we have developed an automated system for the characterization of lithium-ion cells, simulating versatile protocols for cell cycle usage, with a real-time acquisition and elaboration of the battery voltage and current. In this study, we focused on the metrological characterization of the system in terms of the accuracy of the more critical parameters mostly involved in the charge and discharge basic characterization tests. Then, we conducted an experimental test to simulate a real scenario of home solar-based storage in 24h. Results showed that our system was able to achieve the desired critical parameters during both charging and discharging cycles, with relative errors between the measured and imposed parameters always lower than 0.21%.