System simulation of compressed hydrogen storage based residential wind hybrid power systems

This paper deals with the storage of excess wind energy, in a hybrid wind power system, in the form of compressed hydrogen. A system simulation model is developed in Matlab/Simulink platform for the charging and discharging dynamics of compressed hydrogen storage system integrated with the wind turbine and the fuel cell. Wind model is used to estimate the power generation in the wind turbine. When the wind power generation exceeds the load, the excess power is diverted to the electrolyzer to produce hydrogen. As and when the pressure inside the electrolyzer builds, a compressor is operated intermittently (for higher efficiency) to divert the hydrogen into high pressure cylinders. When demand exceeds the power generation, fuel cell supplies the power to the load. A number of fuel cell stacks are provided to meet the required load. The overall efficiency of the storage system, defined as the ratio of the useful energy derived from the storage system to the energy diverted to the storage system is found to be 24.5% for the compressed hydrogen storage based system. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.