SmartGrid

StorageVET and DER-VET are for simulating and valuing the services provided by energy storage and microgrids, respectively. These tools model how the integration of distributed energy resources can produce value to individual customers, ratepayers as a whole, and to society in general. They are publicly-available, open-source, valuation and optimization software tools.

EVgo builds, owns, operates and maintains the largest EV fast charging network in the U.S. This is a rapidly growing, mission-based business with greater than 50% year-on-year growth that comprises a complex integration of high-power electronics, IoT systems, data science, and rapidly evolving business models. This lecture will introduce the fundamentals of an EV charging business from EVgo's perspective and experience. The lecture will cover:

• The basics of AC and DC EV charging
• Architecture of a complete charging network
• Exploration of customer segmentation and EV penetration forecasts
• Business fundamentals and models
• Policy and regulation

Visit to Tesla Gigafactory, no lecture

Battery pack design for transportation is a rapidly evolving and fascinating topic at the intersection of electrical, mechanical, and software engineering. We will discuss how to translate vehicle level requirements such as vehicle weight, speed, drag, range, and recharge time into battery pack specifications such as voltage, energy (kWh), and power (kW). We will then discuss the typical design of a lithium ion battery pack including cells, packaging, thermal management, battery management, and safety and look at a few examples from scooters, motorcycles, cars, and airplanes. Next we will look at lithium ion battery pack safety and various strategies to mitigate the failure modes. Finally, we will review the cutting edge of battery pack design and a few potentially breakthrough technologies.

The lecture will provide an overview of lessons learned when designing battery thermal management systems for advanced vehicles. We will start by understanding where the heat is generated in a cell, the efficiencies of power and energy cells, and what type of battery thermal management solutions are available in today's market. We will then investigate three different battery pack thermal management strategies employed by the OEMs – water cooling, air cooling and active (vapor compression) cooling- and outline the advantages and disadvantages of each technology. We will also delve into the Department of Energy's extreme fast charging program describing how the cell and module thermal design needs to be improved to meet the lifetime and safety expectations of the consumer. Finally, we will introduce the ultimate thermal challenge – cells entering into thermal runaway and what strategies are being employed to control or mitigate this phenomena. In the end, we hope to show that energy storage systems are varied, and each application requires a unique thermal solution to address today's technological barriers.

Safety incidents with lithium ion batteries have been the "elephant in the room" for several years now, with high profile incidents in consumer electronics, electric vehicles and stationary installations popping up periodically on the news with often dramatic consequence. All stored energy ultimately carries an inherent hazard. The hazards inherent to lithium ion batteries however are often less well understood than those of more conventional means of energy storage. Sandia National Laboratory's Battery Abuse Testing Laboratory looks to use destructive battery testing to better understand the hazards presented lithium ion batteries. This talk will look at the general consequences of catastrophic battery failure, including heat release, projectiles and fire/flammable components. Various battery chemistries have been observed to have different responses as well. Battery failure calorimetry has been used in the past to quantify this effect, with collected results discussed here. Ultimately, as progressively larger battery systems are explored the system level impact of a single cell battery failure becomes important as well. Sandia has explored techniques for cell to system thermal runaway propagation with examples of this testing shown.

TOPIC: Battery Modeling and Design
This lecture provides an overview of lithium-ion technology with a focus on modeling for design and simulation. Lithium-ion is dominant battery technology mainly because of high energy and power density, outstanding cycle and calendar life, and acceptable cost. The design of practical cells is a trade-off among competing requirements. The design options are determined by the components (active materials, separators, electrolytes, collectors, packages). The electrical and thermal behavior of lithium-ion cells depends on the rates of solid and liquid phase mass transfer in the cell. The electrothermal performance can be estimated by modeling and numerous commercial software programs are available. Simple circuit models have proven especially useful for simulation of automotive cells.

TOPIC: Power Electronics: Dc-dc and DC-AC converters

In this lecture, we will briefly describe the various topologies that are used in the design of dc-dc converters commonly used in battery-operated systems. We will also describe the basic modulations used in Dc-ac converters that are commonly used in electric motor drives.

In this lecture, we will introduce how power electronics components operate to deliver power from the grid to a dc source efficiently. We will also describe how to measure the distortion introduced by the converters as well as the allowable limits in distortion.

This lecture will discuss some of the foundations of health-conscious lithium-ion battery control. The lecture will motivate the need for health-conscious control, and discuss some of the models used for representing battery performance and degradation dynamics in the literature. Based on these foundations, examples of health-conscious control problem formulations, solution methods, and results will be presented for cell-, pack-, system-, and infrastructure-level applications. Connections between health-conscious control and more classical battery control challenges such as pack balancing will be discussed, motivating a broader perspective on those more traditional challenges.