On-site solar powered refueling stations for green hydrogen production and distribution: performances and costs

Today, the hydrogen is considered an essential element in speeding up the energy transition and generate important environmental benefits. Not all hydrogen is the same, though. The “green hydrogen”, which is produced using renewable energy and electrolysis to split water, is really and completely sustainable for stationary and mobile applications. This paper is focused on the techno-economic analysis of an on-site hydrogen refueling station (HRS) in which the green hydrogen production is assured by a PV plant that supplies electricity to an alkaline electrolyzer. The hydrogen is stored in low pressure tanks (200 bar) and then is compressed at 900 bar for refueling FCHVs by using the innovative technology of the ionic compressor. From technical point of view, the components of the HRS have been sized for assuring a maximum capacity of 450 kg/day. In particular, the PV plant (installed in the south of Italy) has a size of 8MWp and supplies an alkaline electrolyzer of 2.1 MW. A Li-ion battery system (size 3.5 MWh) is used to store the electricity surplus and the grid-connection of the PV plant allows to export the electricity excess that cannot be stored in the battery system. The economic analysis has been performed by estimating the levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) that is an important economic indicator based on the evaluation of investment, operational & maintenance and replacement costs. Results highlighted that the proposed on-site configuration in which the green hydrogen production is assured, is characterized by a LCOH of 10.71 €/kg.

Comparative Analysis on Various Types of Energy Storage Devices for Wind Power Generation

Specifically for wind and photovoltaic, energy Storage is well regarded as an important tool for renewable energy. Distributed generation could also give benefits, but the position and use of wind energy are almost reciprocal to the PV system. So the needs of energy storage devices are coming into account for enhancing the power generations. This chapter gives brief idea about the conventional and flow based battery system for energy storage in power system. Here various conventional battery system compared with flow battery system for maintaining the power stabilities and power quality. The objective for this study is to find the better energy storage device which can regulate both stability and efficiency of the renewable energy system. Basically wind energy battery storage systems are depicted here with their construction, operation and usability. This paper can be effective for the researchers to study and to implement the better energy storage device in the wind or solar system to regulate the power quality. A brief comparison was highlighted in the discussion section for better analysis.

Optimized operation of large scale battery systems

In the decentralized renewable driven electric energy system, economically viable battery systems become increasingly important for providing grid-related services. End of 2016, STEAG has successfully started the commercial operation of six 15 MW large scale battery systems which have been incorporated in STEAG’s primary control pool. During the commissioning phase, extensive effort has been spent in optimizing the operational efficiency of these systems with promising results. However, the operation experience has shown that there is still significant potential for improving the system behavior as well as reducing the aging of the battery cells. By analyzing historical data of the charging power associated with the state of charge management, opportunities for significantly reducing the operational costs have been identified. By means of more involved model-based control strategies, which adequately consider the specific characteristics of the battery system, and by using mathematical optimization and artificial intelligence, adapting the state of charge management strategy to new applications, these additional cost savings can be obtained. Apart from giving insights into the operational experience with large scale battery systems, the contribution of this paper lies in proposing strategies for reducing the operational costs of the battery system using classical approaches as well as mathematical optimization and neural networks. These approaches will be illustrated by simulation results.

Towards reliable three-electrode cells for lithium–sulfur batteries

Three-electrode measurements are valuable to the understanding of the electrochemical processes in a battery system. However, their application in lithium–sulfur chemistry is difficult due to the complexity of the system...

Influence of Heating Area and Heating Power on Lithium Ion Battery Thermal Runaway Test

Thermal propagation test of lithium-ion battery is an important method to verify the safety of battery system, and how to effectively trigger the thermal runaway of a cell and minimize the energy introduced into the system become the key of test method design. In this work, the influence of different heating area and different heating power on thermal runaway of prismatic cells and pouch cells is studied. The results show that when the heating area is fixed, the heating power increases, the heating time required to trigger the thermal runaway of the cells becomes shorter. The energy needed to be introduced becomes smaller, but there will be a minimum value of the introduced energy. On the other hand, the thermal runaway results of prismatic cells are more sensitive to the change of heating area, and the thermal runaway results of pouch cells are more sensitive to heating power.