Optimization of the photovoltaic-hydrogen supply system of a stand-alone remote-telecom application

Hydrogen is considered as the optimal carrier for the surplus energy storage from renewable resources. Although hydrogen and its application in fuel cell is considered as a high-cost energy system, some cost-efficient solutions have been found for their use in stand-alone applications, which usually depend on the variability of renewable sources that have to be oversized in order to reduce their dependence on external energy sources. This paper shows the results from the simulation of several alternatives of introducing hydrogen technologies to increase the independence of a remote-telecom application fed by photovoltaic panels. Hydrogen is obtained by electrolysis and it is used in a fuel cell when the renewable energy source is not enough to maintain the stand-alone application. TRNSYS simulation environment has been used for evaluating the proposed alternatives. The results show that the best configuration option is that considering the use of hydrogen as a way to storage the surplus of radiation and the management system can vary the number of photovoltaic panels assigned to feed the hydrogen generation, the batteries or the telecom application. (C) 2009 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.