Energy storage for load balancing in nuclear power plants
Krzysztof Badyda
Warsaw University of Technology, Poland
ABSTRACT
We have to do with different concepts of the role of Nuclear Power in individual countries. Examples include Germany, where nuclear energy has been phased out, France, where nuclear energy plays a key role. and Poland. Today, Poland's Energy Policy and the National Energy and Climate Plan emphasize the construction of new nuclear power units. This is happening amidst the intensive development of intermittent renewable sources. Already today we can observe periods of excess production capacity to meet the needs of energy. This is accompanied by the growing curtailment of renewable energy resources operation. The remedy is the construction of energy storage facilities and the use of various technologies for managing excess renewable energy. Examples of nuclear power plant plants cooperating with energy storage systems will be presented.
New proposal was presented during conference presentations and in the papers prepared for publication. This studies evaluates the feasibility of integrating steam accumulator-based thermal energy storage into the nuclear power plant secondary circuit to enable intraday grid stabilization, addressing renewable energy source intermittency. TES would be charged with steam produced in steam generator (SG), accounting for the pressure losses in the SG-to-TES and TES-to-turbine connecting pipelines.
As demonstrated, estimated round-trip efficiency of the presented solution will be lower than for typical lithium battery storage with comparable capacity, but visibly less expensive. Using the April 2025 Iberian Peninsula blackout as a case study, another analysis demonstrates that TES allows the reactor to avoid shutdown and xenon poisoning by diverting excess steam during the outage. Simulation results in this case indicate that the coupled TES-NPP system enables the plant to remain in hot standby and reconnect to the grid as early as 80 minutes after collapse – over 10 times faster than in the actual blackout scenario. More details will be provided for the presented examples.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Krzysztof Badyda is a full Professor in the Power Engineering Division at the Institute of Heat Engineering, Faculty of Power and Aeronautical Engineering, Warsaw University of Technology. His activity is focused on mathematical modeling of power installations, with special emphasis on steam turbine and gas turbine plants, additionally environment protection technologies in power engineering and new technologies in power engineering industry. He received a Ph.D. degree from the Warsaw University of Technology, Faculty of Power and Aeronautical Engineering in 1990 and D.Sc. form this same faculty in 2001, title of professor received 2011.
He has experience in research group managing and implementation of research projects and also in cooperation with different industrial and scientific teams. (especially industrial partners, including international corporations, exemplary Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Europe, Siemens, Alstom Power, General Electric). He is the author or co-author of over 300 journal and conference papers, co-author of 15 granted patents. He was the deputy dean of the Faculty of Power and Aeronautical Engineering, deputy director and director of the Institute of Heat Engineering, Warsaw University of Technology. Chairman of the Thermodynamics and Combustion Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences, since 2024. President of the board of the Polish Chamber of Commerce for Renewable and Dispersed Power, since 2023.
