Hourly energy management for grid-connected wind-hydrogen systems

This paper is a complete technical-economic analysis of the hourly energy management of the energy generated in wind-hydrogen systems. Wind power generation depends on the unpredictable nature of the wind. if the wind-power penetration becomes high in the Spanish electrical grid, energy management will be necessary for some wind farms. A method is proposed in this paper to adjust the generation curve to the demand curve, consisting of the generation of hydrogen and storing it in a hydrogen tank during off-peak (low demand) hours, while during the rest of the hours (peak hours, high demand) the stored hydrogen can be used to generate electricity. After revising the results obtained in this paper, for the current values of efficiency of the electricity-hydrogen-electricity conversion (approximately 30%) and due to the high cost of the hydrogen components, for a wind-hydrogen system to be economically viable the price of the sale of the energy generated by the fuel cell would be very high (approximately 171 c(sic)/kWh). (C) 2008 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.