Abstract
Utilization of renewable energy (e.g., wind, solar, bio-energy) is high on international and governmental agendas. In order to address energy poverty and increase energy efficiency for rural villages, a hybrid distribution generation (DG) system including wind, hydrogen and fuel cells is proposed to supplement to the main grid. Wind energy is first converted into electrical energy while part of the generated electricity is used for water electrolysis to generate hydrogen for energy storage. Hydrogen is used by fuel cells to convert back to electricity when electrical energy demand peaks. An analytical model has been developed to coordinate the operation of the system involving energy conversion between mechanical, electrical and chemical forms. The proposed system is primarily designed to meet the electrical demand of a rural village in the UK where the energy storage system can balance out the discrepancy between intermittent renewable energy supplies and fluctuating energy demands so as to improve the system efficiency. Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used as an optimization strategy to determine the operational scheme for the multi-vector energy system. In the work, four case studies are carried out based on real-world measurement data. The novelty of this study lies in the GA-based optimization and operational methods for maximized wind energy utilization. This provides an alternative to battery energy storage and can be widely applied to wind-rich rural areas.
Highlights
The technologies of integrating renewable energy into smart grids are booming where renewables, including wind, solar and bio-energy, have become promising resources around the globe [1,2].Taking the UK for example, renewables from wind, solar, hydro, and biofuel take up 26.6% of the total electricity generation [3]
The open circuit potential (OCP) is the theoretical or equilibrium potential of an electrode in the absence of an external current flowing to or from the electrode, which can be calculated based on the knowledge of thermodynamics
Assuming the reactants and product behave as an ideal gas, the change in the Gibbs free energy in an isothermal condition is expressed by dp dG = R·T·
Summary
The technologies of integrating renewable energy into smart grids are booming where renewables, including wind, solar and bio-energy, have become promising resources around the globe [1,2]. Taking the UK for example, renewables from wind, solar, hydro, and biofuel take up 26.6% of the total electricity generation [3]. Wind energy is a major contributor to renewable power generation, which accounts for 45% of the total renewables. For villages with grid connections, electrical power generated from renewables can be fed into the main grid. For off-grid villages, the generated electricity needs to be stored (e.g., in batteries) to balance load and demand. Energy storage is necessary to store a certain amount of electricity during the off-peak hours and output it during peak hours [5,6,7,8,9,10]
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