From Cell to System: Accelerated hpc Simulations of BESS Aging under Frequency Regulation and Arbitrage use cases

Conference · Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2026

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/EESAT65054.2026.11404102· OSTI ID:3022125

Ayalasomayajula, Surya ^[1]; Starke, Michael ^[1]; Allu, Srikanth ^[1]

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1. ORNL

Lithium-ion battery energy storage systems (BESS) packs have emerged as a leading solution for grid-scale energy storage, enhancing resiliency and balancing load fluctuations. Yet, experimental characterization of large-format LIB packs-particularly to assess performance and degradation over hundreds of cycles - demands substantial hardware investment and multi-year testing campaigns. In this work, we couple a hierarchical, physics-based modeling framework agnostic to electrode chemistries with high-performance computing to accelerate systems level evaluation by upto two orders of magnitude. Building on the open-source liionpack platform, we implement cell, module, and pack-scale electrochemical models enriched with mechanistic aging mechanisms and deploy them on an HPC cluster to simulate 150−200kWh systems over 500 - 1,000 cycles with in days. We subject these virtual B ESS to both constant-current cycling and realistic grid service profiles spanning frequency regulation, ramp-rate support, and energy arbitrage-and quantify the resulting degradation patterns. Our results reveal that localized cell aging can induce substantial nonuniformity at module and pack levels, with service-specific cycling protocols driving distinct aging modes. This rapid, multiscale modeling approach provides a powerful design-space exploration tool for optimizing electrical architecture, control strategies, and operational schedules to prolong pack lifetime and lower total cost of ownership.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE); USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 3022125
• Resource Type: Conference paper/presentation
• Conference Information: 2026 IEEE Electrical Energy Storage Applications and Technologies Conference (EESAT 2026) - Tucson, Arizona, United States of America - 1/5/2026-1/6/2026
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English