This document presents a summary of the main results of the activities carried out in the 2013 Annual Implementation Plan (PAR) of the “Electricity Storage” project. The document is divided into an introductory chapter, in which the main national and international research programs and the main objectives of the three-year project are presented, followed by four chapters relating to the specific objectives of the 2013 PAR, for which the main results, the motivations of the research and the development phases of the same are presented, as well as a brief summary of the activities carried out in the previous PAR.Chapter 6 describes the collaboration with universities and industry. Chapters 8 and 9 briefly describe the activities of the national and international working groups: EERA, IEC, CENELEC and CEI. Knowledge dissemination has continued through the publication of articles and presentations and through collaboration with AEEGSI, ANIE, AEIT, FIAMM and Telecom Italia; for details see chapter 13.
The overall objective of the project is to test small-scale electrical energy storage systems with the aim of developing aging models, diagnostics and battery management techniques, as well as developing high-temperature electrochemical storage technologies.
The project is divided into two strands:

• Strand 1 – Electrochemical storage systems;
• Strand 2 – High temperature Na-beta mono-cell.

With regard to Strand 1, the activities carried out concerned (chapters 2,3 and 4):

• development of the control logic of the hybrid battery-supercapacitor system and the first phase of testing to verify the benefits of using a hybrid battery-supercapacitor storage system compared to using a single battery;
• the development of a test station and life testing for the diagnosis of lithium-ion batteries, which led to the definition of a diagnostic procedure that makes it possible to determine the operating conditions, starting from simple and on-line measurements (State of Charge – SOC and State of Health – SOH) of electrochemical storage systems used in stationary applications connected to the grid;
• identification of the main technical critical issues and assessment of the future prospects of the different electrolyte flow battery technologies.

As regards Strand 2, the activities aim at developing a planar cell configuration for high temperature batteries using sodium nickel chloride technology. These batteries can play an important role in supporting the transmission and distribution of electricity, intervening in conditions of voltage dips and/or voltage and frequency instability and generally improving power quality. For this type of application, the storage system must be characterized by very fast response times and high performance.
From this point of view, the creation of a planar battery configuration would make it possible to obtain batteries characterized not only by high energy densities (typical of this type of storage), but also by improved power densities. In this PAR, new metal/ceramic seals for planar geometry sodium-beta batteries have been studied, fabricated and verified. The seal refers to the interface between the metal of the cell body and the beta alumina ceramic electrolyte, which acts as an ion transport membrane between the two anode and cathode compartments of the cell, see Chapter 5 for a summary of the results obtained.