Renewable energy sources and power-to-gas aided cogeneration for non-residential buildings

Abstract

One promising technology to manage and store renewable electricity from wind or solar sources is Power to Gas (PtG). PtG combines H2 from electrolysis –run by renewable electricity– with CO2 to produce synthetic CH4. A suitable option to get the required CO2 streams is the integration with carbon capture technologies, in particular with oxy-fuel combustion.The application proposed in this study is a cogeneration system that combines PtG, oxyfuel boiler, wind energy and photovoltaic solar production to be applied in buildings. This paper describes the concept and analyses the influence of equipment dimensions varying the relative size and the proportion of the solar-wind installed power for two locations representative of North and South European countries. ResultsShow that higher solar and wind powers are required in the Northern region to satisfy coverage of thermal demand. It results in longer time displacement of energy storage towards cold months. Accordingly to the generation patterns of wind and solar energies, higher solar proportion results in longer energy storage periods. Therefore, solar resource is more suitable than wind power to exploit the potential of PtG technology, although the size of the overall systems increases.