Preliminary Design of a Self-Sufficient Electrical Storage System Based on Electrolytic Hydrogen for Power Supply in a Residential Application

Abstract

The use of renewable energy and hydrogen technology is a sustainable solution for the intermittent feature of renewable energies. Hence, the aim of the present work is to design a self-sufficient system for a one-family house by coupling a solar photovoltaic array and an anion exchange membrane water electrolyzer (AEMWE). The first step is the selection of the photovoltaic panel by using PV-SYST 7.0 software. Then, the hydrogen production system is calculated by coupling the electrolyzer and photovoltaic panel current–potential curves. A fuel cell is selected to use the hydrogen produced when solar energy is not available. Finally, the hydrogen storage tank is also estimated to store hydrogen for a design basis of four consecutive cloudy days according to the hydrogen consumption of the fuel cell. The whole system is designed by a simple procedure for a specific location in Ciudad Real (Spain) for January, which is known as the coldest month of the year. The simple procedure described in this work could be used elsewhere and demonstrated that the hydrogen production at low scale is a suitable technology to use renewable energy for self-energy supporting in a residential application without any connection to the grid.

Assessing the techno-economic feasibility of hybrid solar-hydrogen systems: A review of recent studies

“…Electrolysis efficiency and solar-to-hydrogen efficiency also increased from 85.8% to 88.5% and 14.5% to 9.7%, respectively. [34] PV/wind (W)/B/E/FC PV-wind-FC-battery hybrid system consisting of 100 MW electrolyzer, 100,000 kg H 2 tank, 198 batteries producing 29,672,746 kWh energy annually. The PV accounted for 30.2% of the load requirements, wind turbine 67.8% and the FC 2%.…”