Measurement-based Modelling and Simulation of a Hydrogengenerating Dry Cell for Complex Domestic Renewable Energy Systems

Abstract

Nowadays, the growing need for energy from renewable sources and growing revulsion towards fossil and nuclear fuels puts sustainable and green energy in the limelight. Producing (electrical) energy in domestic power plants from renewable sources (mainly solar and wind) hardly results in difficulties, but the storage of energy not consumed immediately is a great engineering challenge. In the present paper a complex model has been developed by investigating renewable energy sources, the surplus energy not actually consumed and stored in electrical vehicle (EV) batteries, the conversion to hydrogen for storage purposes and how the main grid is fed. A measurement-based model of a hydrogen generating cell developed for the simulation of complex energetic systems. The parameter estimation of the static model was based on the collected measurement data coming from the detailed examination of a built demonstration cell. The novel element of this work is the Matlab Simulink model for the hydrogen generation cell. Using this model, a dynamic simulator of a complex domestic power plant is made available using renewable energy sources and hydrogen generation cells. Hydrogen generation enables the lossless long-term storage of surplus electric energy collected, but not consumed or injected into the low voltage grid. The generated hydrogen can be consumed for transportation purposes in suitable vehicles or it can be applied in fuel cells generating direct electrical energy for energy-deficient low voltage network situations. Energetic situations potentially occurring in practice were simulated in our complex model. Simulations showed that the presented model is suitable for domestic scale low voltage complex energetic systems.