The HOMER® software can model a lot of different storage technologies, from pumped storage, to super capacitors, to any number of traditional and advanced battery chemistries. To achieve this, it uses a range of storage models that you can use to best match almost any storage technology you might want to model for your microgrid or behind-the-meter design.
There are five different storage models that you can select in the HOMER software:
- Idealized Battery: good for modeling ideal batteries, many lithium-ion chemistries, supercapacitors, and pumped hydro,
- Kinetic Battery: good for modeling traditional lead acid batteries, including VRLA, AGM, and flooded batteries,
- Modified Kinetic Battery: good for precision modeling of almost any advanced chemistry battery, including almost all lithium-ion and advanced lead acid chemistries. This model is part of the Advanced Storage Module (ASM) and works really well with multi-year modeling,
- Flow Battery: good for modeling batteries where you independently size the power and energy storage capabilities such as vanadium-redox batteries, and
- Flywheel: good for modeling high-power, short duration technologies such as flywheels and supercapacitors.
In the Complete Catalog, you can see all of the storage choices available, the battery model that was used for the storage component, as well as capacity and performance metrics to help you select the right storage technology for your application. It will include both the storage components that we've created for you, as well as any storage components that you have created yourself in HOMER Pro