Virtual Load Machine as Test Environment for Industrial Storage Applications

The market share of renewable energy is rising all over the world and leads to a more and more volatile energy supply. The challenge of keeping supply and demand constantly balanced is getting more complex and dynamic. Large scale energy consumers like industrial facilities need to take on an active role in the energy system and adapt their energy consumption to the energy availability. Denoted as energy flexibility this approach controls the energy consumption by changing e.g. the production plan. Storage technologies decouple offer and demand of energy, that end-users are enabled to adapt their energy consumption. Testing new applications for storages can be technologically demanding and is associated with high costs. This paper proposes a hardware in the loop test environment, with which hardware integrations and control strategies of electric storage systems can be tested on a small scale.