Abstract
A 100% renewable energy-based stand-alone microgrid system can be developed by robust energy storage systems to stabilize the variable and intermittent renewable energy resources. Hydrogen as an energy carrier and energy storage medium has gained enormous interest globally in recent years. Its use in stand-alone or off-grid microgrids for both the urban and rural communities has commenced recently in some locations. Therefore, this research evaluates the techno-economic feasibility of renewable energy-based systems using hydrogen as energy storage for a stand-alone/off-grid microgrid. Three case scenarios in a microgrid environment were identified and investigated in order to select an optimum solution for a remote community by considering the energy balance and techno-economic optimization. The “HOMER Pro” energy modelling and simulating software was used to compare the energy balance, economics and environmental impact amongst the proposed scenarios. The simulation results showed that the hydrogen-battery hybrid energy storage system is the most cost-effective scenario, though all developed scenarios are technically possible and economically comparable in the long run, while each has different merits and challenges. It has been shown that the proposed hybrid energy systems have significant potentialities in electrifying remote communities with low energy generation costs, as well as a contribution to the reduction of their carbon footprint and to ameliorating the energy crisis to achieve a sustainable future.
Highlights
Renewable energy (RE) generation has become a national target for all countries towards global sustainable development and greener future [1,2,3] e.g., solar, wind, wave, bioenergy, etc
This study proposes the development of 100% renewable energy-based stand-alone microgrid (SAM) systems with hybrid energy storage for a remote community
Possible feasible combinations are identified, based on the given constraints and inputs, and based on their CAPEX, OPEX, net present cost (NPC) and cost of energy (COE), whereby all scenarios have been analysed and revealed the following; The techno-economic comparison of all scenarios in Table 1 revealed that the Base Case Scenario (BCS) is the lowest in capital investment, but the highest in NPC over the project lifetime
Summary
Renewable energy (RE) generation has become a national target for all countries towards global sustainable development and greener future [1,2,3] e.g., solar, wind, wave, bioenergy, etc. The main challenge in the integration of the RE into conventional energy systems is the vital necessity for large-scale energy storage systems to overcome the variability of renewable resources [4,5]. The storage systems will need to store and shift the RE generated power on different time scales, i.e., hourly, daily and seasonally [7,8]. Have their own merits [5] They all have technical challenges and limitations [5,9]. These limitations raise the necessity for a new approach to store energy in an environmentally friendly way, large-scale capacity and longer discharge duration [9,10,11]. Robust energy storage technology with an intelligent and integrated control system is an urgent requirement today to increase the penetration of RE into the energy mix
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