TY - JOUR AB - Packed-bed thermal stores are integral components in numerous bulk electricity storage systems and may also be integrated into renewable generation and process heat systems. In such applications, the store may undergo charging and discharging periods of irregular durations. Previous work has typically concentrated on the initial charging cycles, or on steady-state cyclic operation. Understanding the impact of unpredictable charging periods on the storage behavior is necessary to improve design and operation. In this article, the influence of the cycle duration (or ‘partial-charge’ cycles) on the performance of such thermal stores is investigated. The response to perturbations is explained and provides a framework for understanding the response to realistic load cycles.The packed beds considered here have a rock filler material and air as the heat transfer fluid. The thermodynamic model is based on a modified form of the Schumann equations. Major sources of exergy loss are described, and the various irreversibility generating mechanisms are quantified.It is known that repeated charge-discharge cycles lead to steady-state behavior, which exhibits a trade-off between round-trip efficiency and stored exergy, and the underlying reasons for this are described. The steady state is then perturbed by cycles with a different duration. Short duration perturbations lead to a transient decrease in exergy losses, while longer perturbations increase it. The magnitude of the change in losses is related to the perturbation size and initial cycle period, but changes of 1–10 % are typical. The perturbations also affect the time to return to a steady-state, which may take up to 50 cycles. Segmenting the packed bed into layers reduces the effect of the perturbations, particularly short durations.Operational guidelines are developed, and it is found that packed beds are more resilient to changes in available energy if the store is not suddenly over-charged (i.e. longer AU - McTigue,JD AU - Markides,C AU - White,AJ DO - 10.1016/j.est.2018.08.016 EP - 392 PY - 2018/// SN - 2352-152X SP - 379 TI - Performance response of packed-bed thermal storage to cycle duration perturbations T2 - Journal of Energy Storage UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.est.2018.08.016 UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/63743 VL - 19 ER -