UC Irvine

To evaluate the impacts and capabilities of deploying a combination of reversible fuel cells and hydrogen storage in a microgrid as a community energy storage option for mitigating power intermittency associated with a high-penetration of renewable photovoltaic resources, dynamic system models for compressed hydrogen energy storage have been developed and applied. The option of hydrogen storage tanks or injection and mixing of the hydrogen into the natural gas pipeline is presented and considered in the simulations as a means of storing the otherwise-curtailed solar power. With 15-minute resolution experimental data from the operating microgrid of the University of California, Irvine, control strategies that would facilitate the dynamic operation of existing generation, load and storage resources (e.g., a gas turbine, steam turbine, chillers, thermal energy storage) are used to project the utility and applicability of hydrogen energy storage. Results show that, by turning down the co-gen cycle as much as possible and manipulating the operation of the chiller plant in order to thermally store the otherwise-curtailed solar energy during the day, the renewable integration of the microgrid could be increased from the current 3.48% to a total of 8.52%.

Special attention is given to those scenarios were the procurement from eligible renewable energy resources is increased in order to meet the future energy goals for the State of California. It is demonstrated how this goal can be easier to accomplish by dynamically dispatching the chiller plant, the co-gen cycle, and using Power-to-Gas techniques.