Technical evaluation of hybrid super capacitor technologies for local energy communities

Abstract

Renewable energy sources have demonstrated in recent years their ability to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels, contribute to the security of energy supply and play an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To benefit from the local use of renewable sources and energy efficiency in distributed systems, the concept of local energy communities is established. In local energy communities, new innovative technologies are combined, highlighting the role of energy storage, to provide greater autonomy to communities that adopt this model. Among energy storage, the use of batteries stands out, while lithium batteries are currently the most widely used for domestic and residential applications, as well as in local energy communities. This work describes the experimental evaluation of an innovative energy storage system for energy communities based on hybrid supercapacitors (HSC), focused on local energy communities, and its comparison with other well established storage technologies, such as lithium-ion batteries.