Storage energy management with power quality concerns the analytic hierarchy process and the fuzzy logic

In view of current and foreseeable energy shortage and environmental scenario, the exploitation of renewable energy sources offer great potential to satisfy the energy lack and to decrease the dependence on fossil fuel, also reducing global warming caused by CO₂ emissions. However, widespread implementation of these sources will be more attractive only if they operate together with energy storage technologies. Besides, an effective storage energy management is essential to deal with some mismatches among power quality, efficiency, costs and environmental constrains. This paper presents a methodology taking as basis the analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy multi-rules and multi-sets. By exploiting a multi-criteria decision making, this methodology evaluates the operation of energy storage systems such as: pumped hydro storage (PHS), compressed air energy storage (CAES), H₂ storage, flywheel, super-capacitors, lithium-ion and NaS advanced batteries and VRB flow battery. The main objective of the study is to develop a multicriteria analysis to find the most appropriate energy storage system concerning a power quality priority. For this, the criteria in analysis are: efficiency, load management, technical maturity, costs, environment impacts and power quality. Considerations and results described in this paper are part of the Research & Development Program undertaken by the Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil.