A hydrogen management method in residential distributed generation systems with photovoltaic cells and hydrogen-storage type fuel cells

Recently, renewable energy have been attracting attention from the global warming and the depletion of fossil fuel. The photovoltaic (PV) systems spread rapidly in the world because the PV systems generate electric power quietly and they can be installed in many places. The output power generated in the PV system fluctuates according to the changes in solar irradiance and panel temperature. The reverse flow of steep surplus power may have bad influences on electric power quality such as a frequency and a voltage in the power system. A residential distributed generation (DG) system composed of the fuel cell (FC) unit, the electrolyzer (EL) unit and the PV system has been proposed for solving these problems. In order to operate this system without interruption, the hydrogen storage volume needs to be managed. This paper proposes a novel hydrogen management method in the residential DG system with the PV cells and the hydrogen-storage type FC's. The hydrogen storage volume is managed to be the preset reference by operating the FC unit and the EL unit. The models of PV, FC and EL are constructed in the simulation. It is clarified by the simulation that the proposed management method is available for the residential DG systems with the PV cells and the hydrogen-storage type FC's.