The laboratory validation for power plant and mine decommissioning within GRAVITEQA aims to assess the technical and economic viability of transforming decommissioned coal plants and mines into sustainable energy storage solutions. This involves the development of a comprehensive methodology for repurposing existing infrastructure and resources for innovative energy storage applications. The validation process includes rigorous testing and analysis in laboratory environments to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed solutions, ensuring their potential for real-world implementation. This validation aims to demonstrate the potential for repurposing decommissioned sites to contribute to a more sustainable and efficient energy landscape.
Specifically, this validation case focuses on the holistic methodology for transforming power plants and mines into high-energy and high-power storage solutions. The validation will occur in phases. Initially, a detailed validation roadmap will be created, aligned with specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The first validation milestone will be an integrated simulation. This involves integrating the developed storage models and the management algorithm into a simulation environment using benchmark electricity grids, such as the IEEE-39 bus HV grid and the CIGRE MV grid. This simulation will test the system under various grid scenarios, including all the grid services proposed, such as responses to voltage variations, frequency nadirs, and frequency deviations.
Following the simulation validation, laboratory experiments will be conducted through simulations within a lab-controlled environment. This lab environment will be used to test the management algorithm under a variety of scenarios. Critically, these scenarios will utilize both synthetic data and real data drawn from available assets in decommissioned coal power plants and abandoned mines. A key example location for this real-world data will be Kardia, Western Macedonia, Greece. This approach will allow the project to simulate close-to-reality operation of the storage technologies as they would provide grid services, enhancing the validity and applicability of the research. This rigorous, multi-phase validation process will demonstrate the potential for repurposing decommissioned sites to contribute to a more sustainable and efficient energy landscape.
To assess the technical and economic viability of transforming decommissioned coal plants and mines into sustainable energy storage solutions.
