Fuel Cells And Hydrogen For Smart Grid

Abstract

Fuel cells and hydrogen can play an important role in the rapidly emerging smart grid. The "soft" wind power can be converted to "hard", reliable utility power by using high temperature stationary fuel cells to co-produce baseload power plus hydrogen, and use of lower temperature fuel cells operating on hydrogen for the load following/peak power (DFC-H2 ® Peaker). If the stationary fuel cell operates on biogas, the hydrogen will be considered renewable and the overall system will be truly renewable power system. Demonstration of some of the major components of such as system is ongoing. A DFC-H2 ® plant in California has co-produced 125 kg/day of hydrogen and 250 kW of power, with a combined hydrogen, power and heat efficiency of 80-85% and ultra-low emissions. The DFC power plants currently installed or on order can support hardening of 500 MW of wind power. IntroductionAs more renewable energy becomes integrated into the US electrical grid, the need for efficient back-up power is becoming more urgent. Renewable wind and solar energy provide intermittent power which must be backed-up to maintain a reliable power grid. Ideally, such back-up power would be efficient, distributed, and low emissions. Distributed power improves efficiency by minimizing transmission losses, but requires low emissions in order to be permitted in densely populated areas where the power need is growing. When relatively higher cost biofuels are used for back-up power, higher efficiency becomes even more important to maximize the biofuel benefit.

An Exploration of the Three-Layer Model Including Stakeholders, Markets and Technologies for Assessments of Residential Smart Grids

“…Also, a portfolio of users identified for minimizing bias, should be considered in order to discern structural and pricing issues in smart grids. Modellers admit the necessity of including many parameters, especially stakeholder behavioral or characterization parameters [54]. Social acceptance and practices also have to be considered closely and more data is needed to be more statistically significant, in order to define to what extent flexibility may play a role [28].…”

“…With reference to the technologies layer, mainly capabilities regarding the flexibility of specific technologies or residential applications are of interest. In addition to the above, hydrogen as a storage medium has received much attention in the last few years because of the flexibility it can provide [53,54]. Electrolyzers can provide wind/solar peak shaving by splitting water with renewable energy sources electricity and producing hydrogen.…”

(Invited) Key Contributions by Dr. H. Russel Kunz in the Fundamental Understanding of Carbonate Fuel Cells

“…Since DFC is a very efficient internal reformer, essentially all the hydrocarbon feed can be converted to hydrogen. Therefore, a unique application is to utilize DFC to co-produce both power and hydrogen (4). DFC could also be operated at electrolysis mode for efficient hydrogen production from natural gas via an innovative REP concept (Reformer-Electrolyzer-Purifier) (5).…”