Design of rectifier power supplies for Thermal Energy Storage System

Abstract

Energy storage systems have been brought to focus as means to reduce the high fluctuation in the production side and facilitate integration of renewable energy sources. This work is focused on investigating design and utilizing of cost-effective Thermal Energy Storage System (TESS) which has longer life-time as an alternative to Battery Energy Storage System. Both thermal and electrical design aspects are investigated in this work. For thermal part; detailed analysis of electrical properties of the heating element (i.e. graphite) is conducted to design the heating element used to heat up the storage material (i.e. molten salt). For electrical part; asymmetric and symmetric power electronic rectifier are investigated and compared with low frequency modulation and pulse width modulation techniques, based on their power factor (PF) and total harmonic distortion (THD). Finally, direct output voltage control and cascaded current voltage control are implemented and compared.