Welcome to your course Energy Storage

This course runs in the first year of the 2 year Master's program in Solar Energy Engineering and is also open to exchange students and independent students with the right qualifications. The course starts in week 13 (on Monday the 25th of March) and ends in week 22. The course is mainly a project course, where you as a student will do a state-of-the-art literature review and small theoretical research project for an energy storage technology. To support you in this work, there are a number of pre-recorded lectures and compulsory seminars. You are also highly recommended (expected) to take the parallel course Scientific Communication and Information Management (EG4003), which is designed to help you with the project in this course.

First things first

Below, on this page, you will find general information about the course, it's learning outcomes and learning activities. To view the course content you will then need to go to the Modules section (this requires you to be registered). Contact details to teachers in the course can be found at the bottom of this page. If you should encounter any problems of a more general nature, don't hesitate to contact our support staff, either through the support E-mail or our support Zoom room.

Why study this course?

Energy storage is a crucial part of renewable energy in general due to the intermittent nature of e.g. solar and wind energy. Energy can be stored in various ways and in this course we will briefly explore thermal, electrical and mechanical storage options both for long and short term storage. This will give you as a student an overview of the field before you start focusing on an energy storage project of your own. It should be emphasized that we will not go deep into storage technologies in lectures during the course – this will more serve as an overview to existing technologies. Instead, it will
be you who will go more in depth when researching a storage technology of your choice. In the two-year Solar Energy Engineering Master’s programme, this course is placed at the end of the first year, when you have studied courses such as Solar Thermal Design and PV and Hybrid Systems Design. In these courses you have already come in contact with energy storage and here you will be able to get deeper knowledge in a chosen subject. Depending on your planning and choice of project, it’s possible that your work here can be a start for an upcoming Thesis Work. 

What does the course contain?

The learning outcomes in the course are given below, together with the method of assessment.

1. Describe, analyse and compare different storage technologies for electricity as well as for
   heating and cooling.
2. Formulate a complete system with storage including suitable energy sources and loads as
   well as suggest a suitable operational strategy for the system.
3. Describe a method for calculating the storage capacity of a chosen piece of storage
   technology and do a substantiated estimation of said capacity.
4. Present the project and also objectively be an opponent to another project, both orally and in
   writing.

Learning outcome (1) is assessed in a compulsory seminar “Key figures for storage technologies” and is included to give you a broad overview of a chosen storage technology (in order to get your project started) as well as learning what other students have found out for their storage technologies.

To reach the second learning outcome (2) you need to design your storage system and define boundaries. This will help you get a better systematic view and not only focus on a technology. This is assessed both in a compulsory seminar ”System definitions” as well as in the final report.

Designing/calculating the storage capacity of an energy storage system is of course crucial to its function. Within this course the aim is not to do a proper size calculation (there is in many cases not enough time or not the proper resources) but rather describe what method would be used to do this. This is evaluated in learning outcome (3) both in the final report and in a compulsory seminar “Calculation/dimensioning”.

Finally, your findings from the project will be presented through an oral presentation as well as a written report (4). Similarly, to the final thesis presentation, you will also be the opponent of another student group. This will give you insight into other storage technologies through the work of your fellow classmates.  

How will the learning outcomes be achieved?

The main learning activities, and how they connect to the course examination, are described below.

Course room in Canvas
In the Canvas course room you will be able to find reading material, recorded lectures, hand-in instructions and more. The announcements in Canvas will be the main information channel used to share important information so make sure to keep updated here and check your E-mail for Canvas updates.

Zoom
Although the main form of study for the live lectures and seminars in the course will be on campus, it is sometimes possible to join on Zoom, and some activities may be only on Zoom. We expect you to
join on campus so availability to join on Zoom should be seen as a service if you are not able to join on campus. If you need information or help regarding Zoom, please visit our website
https://www.du.se/en/study-at-du/study-tools2/zoom/ or our support. You will need both a mic (preferably a headset) as well as a web camera if you join over Zoom. With Zoom it’s also possible to
join using your smartphone which would give you access to both mic and camera (see the above link for information regarding this).

Lectures
The lectures in this course are focused to the first course weeks in order to give you an overview of the energy storage field, where several guest lecturers are involved. Many of the lectures are pre-recorded and available in Canvas (you should focus to watch these during the first two weeks). In the first few weeks there are a number of live guest lectures. As mentioned earlier, we will not be going into too much depth for each technology – this will instead be the task for you as a student (for the storage technology you choose for your project).

Seminars
Throughout the course there are three compulsory seminars as well as a progress report seminar. In order to be approved on the compulsory seminars, you need to come prepared
(have done the required work for the seminar) as well as actively contribute during the seminar.

Project (and collaboration with EG4003) – working in groups
The main part of the course is the project, where you will pair up with another student to do a small research project focusing on one energy storage technology. The project resulting in a final written report as well as presentation/opposition is the main part of the course. You as a student have a large responsibility to plan and do your own research to be able to write your report! You will get help through the seminars in the course. You are also expected to attend the parallel course EG4003 (Scientific Communication and Information Management) in which you will receive valuable help with both finding literature, writing your report and preparing your presentation. The quality expected from the project is the same regardless of whether you take EG4003 or not (meaning the
burden on you is greater if you don’t)!

For the project, there are four deadlines during the course: choice of storage technology, extended report proposal, final paper draft and final paper. You will receive feedback on your extended proposal as well as the final paper draft. If you hand in late, feedback may also be late (or even skipped depending on hand in time). In addition, you will do a written opposition on another group’s work (this is done on the final paper draft). During the final presentations you will present your project as well as oppose another group’s
presentation orally.

Examination
The compulsory seminars are graded Pass/Fail, while the presentation/opposition and written report are graded U/G/VG. The final course grade will be weighed between the latter, with the written report being the most important. A final course grade will require at least Pass/G in all the above.

Course evaluation
At the end of the course, a course evaluation will be available as a hand-in in Learn. Please take the time to do this since it really helps with the development of the course. The course analysis from last
year’s course is available here: EG4005 Course Analysis VT23.pdf (and so will this year’s when it’s finished). 

	Course Syllabus			Contact information
	Literature list			Johan Heier Course Coordinator and teacher jhe@du.se
				Pei Huang Teacher, main seminar leader phn@du.se