European Union have founded a project that developes a energy storage system that will help reduce reliance on fossil fuels and will encourage and promote the use of renewable energy sources in any type of building or district. The project is called MESSIB (Multi-source energy storage system integrated in buildings) and provides a backup for intermittent renewable energy sources.
Raindrops on the solar panels at the Baldock Solar Highway project. Picture from OregonDOT (Oregon Department of Transportation) (CC BY 2.0)
Energy storage, through MESSIB projects promotes the decoupling of electricity generation from demand so that it is no longer subject to substantial hourly, daily and seasonal variation. The aim of the project is the development, evaluation and testing of an affordable multi-source energy storage system (MESS), based on new materials, technologies and control systems, for significant reduction of its energy consumption and active management of the building energy demand.
This new concept will reduce and manage smartly the electrical energy required from the grid favoring the wider use of renewable energy sources. The MESSIB basic principles are based on the combination of:
1. Rational use of thermal energy and increasing the building comfort.
2. Improvement of electrical energy storage in order to shift the demand with the production and to optimise the use of low cost “off peak” power from the grid. This will lead to an increasing of the security and efficiency of the electricity network.
3. Integration of the technologies in the building in order to optimize their functionality.
4. A control system that will manage the energy profile use. This principle will contribute to the smart management of building energy demand and to ensure its security, quality and reliability.
MESS is composed by thermal and electrical storage systems, integrated with the building installations and a control system to manage the building energy demand. The use of MESS will reduce raw material use for thermal performance and improve the indoor confort, as well as the quality and security of energy supply at building, and will reduce significantly the energy unit cost for end-users.
The basic idea of MESSIB is to provide a buffer to balance fluctuations in supply and demand. The demand fluctuates in daily cycles (day and night), weekly periods and seasonly. The energy storage in buildings project will cover these cycles, with short-term, medium-term or long-term (seasonal) storage capacity.
The work conducted under the MESSIB project will support the introduction of renewable energy sources, speed up decarbonisation of the electricity grid and improve security of energy transmission. It will reduce costs and improve efficiency of the electricity network as well as introduce the society in the inevitable process of the Third Industrial Revolution.