Abstract
Renewable energy has become very popular in recent years. The amount of renewable generation has increased in both grid-connected and stand-alone systems. This is because it can provide clean energy in a cost-effective and environmentally friendly fashion. Among all varieties, photovoltaic (PV) is the ultimate rising star. Integration of other technologies with solar is enhancing the efficiency and reliability of the system. In this paper a fuel cell–solar photovoltaic (FC-PV)-based hybrid energy system has been proposed to meet the electrical load demand of a small community center in India. The system is developed with PV panels, fuel cell, an electrolyzer and hydrogen storage tank. Detailed mathematical modeling of this system as well as its operation algorithm have been presented. Furthermore, cost optimization has been performed to determine ratings of PV and Hydrogen system components. The objective is to minimize the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of this standalone system. This optimization is performed in HOMER software as well as another tool using an artificial bee colony (ABC). The results obtained by both methods have been compared in terms of cost effectiveness. It is evident from the results that for a 68 MWh/yr of electricity demand is met by the 129 kW Solar PV, 15 kW Fuel cell along with a 34 kW electrolyzer and a 20 kg hydrogen tank with a LPSP of 0.053%. The LCOE is found to be in 0.228 $/kWh. Results also show that use of more sophisticated algorithms such as ABC yields more optimized solutions than package programs, such as HOMER. Finally, operational details for FC-PV hybrid system using IEC 61850 inter-operable communication is presented. IEC 61850 information models for FC, electrolyzer, hydrogen tank were developed and relevent IEC 61850 message exchanges for energy management in FC-PV hybrid system are demonstrated.
Highlights
The depletion of fossil fuels and increasing electricity needs attracted attention towards renewable power generation
This paper presents a simplified modeling of an autonomous fuel cell–solar photovoltaic (FC-PV)
A simplified mathematical model of a fuel cell (FC)-PV generation has been proposed for carrying out cost analysis
Summary
The depletion of fossil fuels and increasing electricity needs attracted attention towards renewable power generation. Authors in [3] presented a feasibility study by integrating stand-alone or grid connected fuel cells with PV panels to meet the load demand and removed the intermittent nature of the solar generation. Extensive study has been reported in literature for modeling of FC-PV hybrid system but finding optimal configuration of FC-PV hybrid energy system with guaranteed least levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) while ensuring high-reliability of energy supply to the consumer is missing Abridging this knowledge gap, this paper presents a simplified modeling of an autonomous FC-PV based hybrid energy system. A detailed and simplified modeling of fuel cell technology, which may be helpful in designing other fuel cell-based different hybrid energy systems, in off grid locations is presented.
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