Design and construction of a test bench to characterize efficiency and reliability of high voltage battery energy storage systems

Stationary battery energy storage systems are widely used for uninterruptible power supply systems. Furthermore, they are able to provide grid services. This yields in rising installed power and capacity. One possibility uses high voltage batteries. This results in an improvement of the overall system efficiency. High voltage batteries may be advantageous for future medium voltage DC-grids as well. In all cases, high availability and reliability is indispensable. Investigations on the operating behavior of such systems are needed. For this purpose, a test bench for high voltage storage systems was built to analyze these processes for different battery technologies. A special safety infrastructure for the test bench was developed due to the high voltage and the storable energy of approximately 120 kWh. This paper presents the layout of the test bench for analyzing high voltage batteries with about 4,300 volts including all components, the safety requirements with the resultant safety circuit and the aim of the investigations to be performed with the test bench.