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Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) Monitoring and Integration Challenges
Why does a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) present unique monitoring challenges, and what capabilities does N3uron’s IIoT and DataOps platform have to address these challenges and facilitate integration? Let’s dive in — starting with some facts and figures.
As the world transitions to renewable energy sources, renewable energy storage has emerged as foundational for that transition given its role in stabilizing power supply. In a 2023 report, McKinsey projected the global Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) market to reach $120-$150 billion by 2030. Grid stability requirements for renewable integration, declining battery costs, governments’ incentives supporting energy storage, as well as increased focus on grid resilience have all contributed to BESS market growth.
What is a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS)?
Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) store energy when supply exceeds demand and discharge stored energy to the grid whenever solar and wind energy sources can’t meet demand (such as during peak times or power outages). BESS is a milestone for adopting clean energy because battery energy storage bridges the gap between production and demand by providing grid flexibility, load balancing, and enhanced integration of intermittent renewable sources.
Enhancing flexibility and energy supply resilience is a key reason why utility-scale energy providers invest in battery energy storage. They also purchase a BESS for its ability to accelerate decentralized infrastructure, its high energy density, and fast response time. Such advantages enable revenue streams such as Capacity Markets, Dynamic Frequency Response, Energy Arbitrage, and others. Because they provide more dependable power from solar and wind assets to the grid, Battery Energy Storage Systems have become essential for renewable energy companies.
The Challenges of BESS Monitoring and Management
For renewable energy owners and operators, integrating a BESS system offers the opportunity to maximize revenue, minimize costs, and manage risk — but also adds challenges. Because energy storage is a different asset class from wind and solar, it has unique monitoring requirements:
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- A BESS has a finite number of charge/discharge cycles and energy throughput available before its economic life is exhausted.
- The system’s operating temperature — and how the system is cycled — impacts its economic life, ability to maintain manufacturer warranty compliance, and owner/operator ROI. For example, common causes of BESS failures include thermal runaway events, temperature extremes, and humidity.
- Battery Energy Storage Systems typically have a supporting role in renewable energy plants, so they need to be integrated with other assets to support grid needs and maximize ROI. In addition to the batteries, a BESS requires additional components that allow the system to be connected to an electrical network.
Most revenue for BESS systems is generated on only a fraction of days per year, so real-time monitoring is essential to ensure optimal operation.
What Does a BESS System Typically Include?
Battery Energy Storage System equipment encompasses more than batteries. BESS manufacturers typically provide a suite of integrated systems to ensure proper functioning of their energy storage solutions and to support warranty compliance. BESS warranties involve a set of strict operating parameters that the operator must follow, as detailed later in this article.
A BESS System typically includes:
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- Battery Management System (BMS): The BMS is responsible for monitoring and managing the individual battery cells within the BESS to ensure optimal performance, safety, and lifespan. It tracks battery cell parameters such as voltage, current, temperature, and estimates its state of charge (SoC) and State-of-Health (SoH).
- Storage enclosure: This can be an outdoor module or a containerized solution along with thermal management.
- Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC): The HVAC system is crucial for maintaining the optimal operating temperature range of the BESS, which is essential for maximizing battery lifespan and performance and for maintaining warranty compliance.
- Power Conversion System (PCS): The PCS manages the conversion of the BESS’s direct current (DC) output to alternating current (AC) used for the power grid, as well as the reverse process during charging.
- Energy Management System (EMS): The EMS coordinates control and operation of the BMS, inverters, and other BESS components by collecting and analyzing data used to manage and optimize overall system performance.
- Fire Suppression and Safety Systems: These systems are designed to detect and mitigate potential fire hazards, ensuring safe operation of the BESS.
While these systems work together to ensure the proper functioning of the BESS, integrating them with other critical power systems and energy management platforms can be challenging for asset owners and operators.
BESS Integration with Power Plant Controllers (PPC)
BESS assets are often integrated with larger power generation and distribution systems, such as Power Plant Controllers (PPC) or Master Power Plant Controllers (MPPC). These systems are responsible for coordinating the overall operation of the power plant, including the management of BESS assets.
Seamless integration between the BESS and the PPC/MPPC is crucial for optimizing the performance and utilization of the energy storage system. This integration allows for the exchange of critical data, such as:
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- Operational commands: The PPC/MPPC can issue commands to the BESS, instructing it to charge, discharge, or maintain a specific state of charge based on grid demands and other factors.
- Performance data: The BESS can provide real-time data on its state of charge, power output, and other operational parameters to the PPC/MPPC, enabling more informed decision-making and optimization.
- Forecasting and scheduling: The integration of the BESS with the PPC/MPPC can facilitate more accurate forecasting of renewable energy generation and enable better scheduling of BESS charging and discharging to support grid stability and reliability.
Achieving this level of integration can be a significant challenge, as it often requires overcoming compatibility issues, data format differences, and proprietary communication protocols.
Manufacturers’ Requirements for High-Frequency Data Recording to Maintain BESS Warranties
Data quality has a critical role in BESS ROI. To ensure warranty compliance, BESS manufacturers typically specify limits on operating parameters and require asset owners to maintain comprehensive data records to demonstrate that these limits are never exceeded. This includes capturing high-frequency data points, often at intervals as short as 1 second, for parameters such as:
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- Battery cell voltages
- Battery cell temperatures
- Battery current and power
- Battery state of charge (SOC)
- Rate of charge/discharge (C-rates)
- Cycles (charges/discharges per month and/or year)
- HVAC system performance
- Power conversion system (PCS) efficiency
Maintaining these high-frequency data records can be a significant challenge, as it requires specialized software capable of capturing, storing, analyzing, and visualizing large volumes of data. Failure to meet these data recording requirements can lead to voiding BESS warranties, exposing asset owners to expensive repairs or replacements. Additionally, data quality assurance practices should align with the warranty’s asset usage terms, particularly those pertaining to performance guarantees. Optimizing energy storage for performance, reliability, and safety must build on verifiable quality data. For example:
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- Data completeness can comprise missing time-series datapoints and estimated values or constants used in calculations (where measured values should instead be used).
- Along the measurement chain (from data transport to data manipulation), small errors of fractions of a percent can be compounded, resulting in larger errors which render calculations invalid.
How N3uron Solves BESS Monitoring Challenges and Facilitates Integration
N3uron platform, designed for interoperability and real-time monitoring, tackles BESS challenges with modules that empower asset owners and operators to optimize their energy storage investments. The platform also facilitates integrating BESS assets with other solutions like Energy Management Systems (EMS) and Field Management Systems (FMS), or even building an EMS or AMS (Asset Management System) from the ground up.
Energy companies around the world, such as Innergex Chile, already rely on N3uron for their battery energy storage monitoring and integration needs. Let’s examine why — first from a high-level overview then from a technical specs perspective:
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- Flexible Integration: N3uron’s open, standards-based architecture enables seamless, scalable, and flexible integration with a wide range of BESS systems, including those from various manufacturers. This includes the ability to connect with BMS, HVAC, PCS, and other proprietary systems, as well as integrate with PPC/MPPC controllers.
- High-Frequency Data Logging: N3uron’s Historian (an advanced data Historian module) allows for the capture and storage of high-frequency data from BESS assets, ensuring compliance with manufacturers’ data recording warranty requirements. This data can be easily accessed, analyzed, and leveraged for informed decision-making.
- Monitoring and Visualization: N3uron’s intuitive user interface provides asset owners and operators with a dashboard for monitoring the performance and health of their BESS assets any time from anywhere. This includes real-time and historical data visualization, and analytics. By tracking performance in real-time, N3uron helps asset owners protect their investments and maximize return on their BESS deployments.
- Automated Alerts and Diagnostics: N3uron’s intelligent alerting system can detect anomalies, faults, or deviations from optimal performance, allowing for proactive maintenance and preventing potential downtimes. The platform also provides diagnostics to help identify the root causes of issues and facilitate efficient troubleshooting.
- Scalable and Extensible: N3uron’s fully modular customizable architecture enables it to scale seamlessly as BESS deployments grow in size and complexity. Additionally, its extensive integration capabilities allow easy expansion, including integration with Energy Management Systems (EMS) or any other applications and services or even the development of custom Asset Management Systems (AMS) tailored to specific requirements.
Meeting BESS Operation & Maintenance (O&M) Requirements
According to GCube Insurance’s market insights report, Batteries Not Excluded: Getting the insurance market on board with BESS, over 50% of BESS failures occur within 2 years of operation. The report outlines how addressing risks requires enhanced data and insights on the operation, performance, and failures of BESS. By prioritizing data-driven insights, the market can advance sustainably, safely, and reliably.
For example, to uphold warranties, end users need to gather at least on average 1,000 tags/MW data at 1-sec intervals. This makes it vital to have a solution that allows for the efficient and agile storage and retrieval of large amounts of data, just as N3uron’s Historian does:
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- Extreme Throughput: With unlimited tags and an impressive throughput, N3uron’s Historian sets high standards for speed and efficiency in the fast-paced world of BESS.
- High Compression: Historian also provides efficient storage with 100 million events occupying only 1 GB of storage.
- Seamless Data Retrieval: Historian ensures convenient access to historical data through other modules within N3uron:
- REST API Server: REST API Server streamlines data retrieval, enabling efficient BESS data access, monitoring, and management. This N3uron module is a service that can be deployed with zero code in less than 1 minute.
- OPC UA Server: OPC UA Server module, through its integration with Historian, provides a standardized and secure way to exchange information. OPC UA Server allows N3uron to expose the data collected through any other data acquisition module within the platform to third-party systems.
- Scripting: N3uron’s Scripting module allows the execution of custom logic within the current N3uron node in response to various triggers, such as timers, tag changes, tag conditions, and more.
- Web Vision: Web Vision, N3uron’s module for developing custom 100% web-based HMI and SCADA applications, enables effortless control and monitoring of industrial assets from any device.
- Affordability: N3uron’s Historian is an extremely affordable solution that empowers organizations to optimize their budget while ensuring top-notch data management. As N3uron is sold by modules, billing is based on selected modules.
Unlock Battery Storage Insights with N3uron’s Historian
By addressing the unique challenges of BESS monitoring, management, and integration, N3uron enables asset owners to maximize BESS performance, reliability, and ROI. In this emerging sector riddled with operational intricacies, N3uron — with its advanced industrial integration and data processing capabilities — stands as a reliable ally trusted by energy companies across continents. To explore the platform’s capabilities, download and install N3uron’s free and fully functional demo mode.
