Empirically Based Energy Storage Sizing

The constantly growing power demands in both civilian and defense applications has made it critical that intelligent power system architectures be developed in which energy storage can be used either as its own supply or as a buffer to variable, non-stiff sources. In any such system, the energy storage must be properly sized to meet any anticipated requirements. Properly sizing energy storage is not easy given the variability in its impedance and usable capacity as a function of the rate and temperature, respectively, at which it is operated. New tools are needed that can help power system engineers with the proper sizing of their energy storage. The Pulsed Power and Energy Laboratory (PPEL) at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) has developed a MAT LAB based energy storage sizing tool that uses empirically collected data from a wide variety of energy storage cells across a wide range of usable current rates and operating temperatures to establish a comprehensive database. A user's voltage and load requirements are used to optimally size energy storage, considering each cell within the database, to meet the requirements. The methodology used to design the tool and the results obtained thus far from it will be presented here.