Lithium Battery Storage Degradation Analysis in LVAC Microgrid

2023 confirmed the exponentially increasing trend of using renewable energy sources for a wide variety of uses, from residential to sustainable mobility. The remaining and unsolved problem related to the use of the main renewable sources is still the temporal non-constancy of energy generation (e.g., photovoltaic produces only during the central hours of the day). For this reason, the use of storage systems is still essential to be able to manage renewable energy and harness it at times of greatest need. In this context, the market for batteries used for storage is dominated almost exclusively by lithium, the element with the best performance characteristics but with which many problems are still associated. In this paper, the most modern lithium batteries used as storage for microgrids will be analyzed and the concepts of degradation of power performance and efficiency will be explored. A case study will be conducted in which the lifetime of a modern battery installed inside an everyday working laboratory microgrid will be analyzed. Graphs and comparisons under different circumstances will be presented in order to evaluate the storage system to highlight its strengths, weaknesses and provide an objective assessment for the current state of this technology.