The BEST Storage project focuses on tackling and providing solutions towards the numerous challenges that lay ahead of the European heating and cooling market. By 2030, considering energy efficiency and environmental targets set out by numerous countries and regions throughout the world, the thermal energy storage market could experience threefold growth, reaching over 800 GWh of installed capacity globally. As the EU looks to fulfill its climate neutrality objectives for 2050, one of the key parts of the energy equation that must be solved is that of the heating and cooling markets in the EU-27 which accounts for 50% of annual energy consumption. For these reasons, energy scenarios often suppose a very substantial contribution of renewable energy penetration in the heating and cooling sector supported by the multiplying effects of cross cutting technologies such as thermal energy storage solutions.
The BEST-Storage project tackles these challenges and aims to use the best possible storage technologies for each specific energy demand.
Three storage concepts will be developed:
• a thermo-chemical loss-free energy storage for long-term applications.
• phase change material (PCM) slurry concepts for cold storage applications to provide load shifting and peak shaving.
• a vacuum insulated (VI) water storage vessel for heating applications such as domestic hot water (DHW) and space heating (SH) allowing also to provide load shifting.
These storage approaches will be integrated into complete heating and cooling building energy management systems and short-term storages (PCM-slurry and VI water storage) will be equipped with model predictive controls (MPC) that will benefit from variable electricity prices to reduce operational costs while helping the electricity grid to be more stable, secure and resilient. The storage solutions are inherently modular providing cost savings, flexibility in design, size and operation.
In total, four storage solutions will be developed and tested at different TRL levels:
• one thermo-chemical material (TCM) storage,
• two PCM slurry solutions (PCM emulsion slurry and PCM slurry with supercooling-crystalilization)
• one sensible water storage with vacuum insolation (VI).
Moreover, the storage concepts will be developed and tested in real conditions in three real demo sites.
• Demo-case in Estonia (Single family home): The TCM as well as the VI-water storages integrated into the building energy management system will be demonstrated for heating and DHW applications bringing the systems to TRL 7.
• Demo-case in Greece (Lab-house): The TCM as well as the VI-water storages integrated into the building energy management system will be demonstrated for heating and cooling applications bringing the systems to TRL 7.
• Demo-case in Spain (office building): A PCM slurry storage of 9 kWh including the Model predictive control (MPC) will be used for cooling shifting in a research center building to bring it to TRL 7.
Additionally, an emulated demo-case in Switzerland (single family house) is also included whereby a system for heating and cooling will be demonstrated in the laboratory using a PCM slurry storage of 9 kWh and a VI-water storage bringing the TRL to 6.
