Energy-economic assessment of self-sufficient microgrid based on wind turbine, photovoltaic field, wood gasifier, battery, and hydrogen energy storage

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23/07/2023, 10:03 Energy-economic assessment of self-sufficient microgrid based on wind turbine, photovoltaic field, wood gasifier, battery, an International Journal of Hydrogen Energy Available online 17 May 2023 In Press, Corrected Proof What's this? Energy-economic assessment of self-sufficient microgrid based on wind turbine, photovoltaic field, wood gasifier, battery, and hydrogen energy storage Maciej Zotadek a , Rafat a Alexandros Kafetzis b Kyriakos Panopoulos b Show more go Share " Cite https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2023.04.327 Get rights and content Abstract Designing self-sufficient renewable energy systems is becoming a key issue in the energy sector due to modern energy goals. Due to the variability of renewable energy sources, very often it is necessary to adopt hybrid configurations of renewable energy systems and advanced energy storage to achieve self-sufficiency. However, the adoption of complex and novel systems, including technologies as photovoltaic, wind turbines, biomass gasifiers, hydrogen energy storage, must to be founded on a comprehensive analysis of the system operation under different conditions and its energy and economic performance in the investigated case study. Therefore, the aim of the present paper is carry out a comprehensive feasibility analysis of a novel hybrid renewable energy system achieving a high self-sufficiency level. The system integrates a wind turbine and photovoltaic panels to match the energy load of a tourist resort in Agkistro, Greece. Energy exceeding the load is directed to the energy storage system based on the battery and hydrogen tank. As backup energy source, a wood gasifier is used. The investigation is performed by means of a numerical model developed in TRNSYS software allowing one to simulate dynamically the system and to assess its energy and economic performance. The goal achieved during the simulation of the system was to ensure at least 97% of energy demand from renewable sources. Moreover, a parametric analysis of the storage system is presented. It is found that payback period of the installation varies in the range between 11 and 15 years, for systems configurations allowing to satisfy 90- 98% of the users energy yearly demand from renewables. The achieved results allows one to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed system from both an energy and economic point of view. Introduction Stand-alone microgrids are heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Due to transportation costs of the fuel, this approach of satisfying the user's energy needs is relatively expensive for off-grid areas in comparison with 1/923/07/2023, 10:03 Energy-economic assessment of self-sufficient microgrid based on wind turbine, photovoltaic field, wood gasifier, battery, an areas connected to the national grids [1]. In order to ensure power supply in the transitional period, efforts are being made to supply such locations with liquefied natural gas (LNG) powering solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) [2]. Energy sources, considered as future ones, are based on renewable energy, with the possibility of energy storage integration to manage peaks and valleys of energy demand and production [3]. Locally available biomass is also considered as a source of energy allowing to increase independence during periods with low energy supply or high demand [4,5]. Biogas produced from livestock waste is even considered as a cost-effective source of fuel for SOFC, with a predicted levelized cost of electricity at 0.115 EUR/kWh [6]. Efforts that are being made in order to satisfy energy demands of islandic microgrids are connected with distributed generation from renewable sources, nevertheless many of them are focused only one renewable energy source. D'Agnostino etal. [7] prepared a numerical study of Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB) powered by PV installation. Authors compared fixed PV and tracking PV installation and two kinds of energy balance (yearly and monthly) for the case of a building located in South-Italy. Authors prove that in order to satisfy energy demands on a monthly basis it is necessary to oversize the installation for 200% in case of a fixed system and 140% in case of an installation with sun tracking in comparison with yearly basis. Aberilla etal. [8] presented a study concerning the environmental impact of small-scale biomass power technologies in agricultural communities of Southeast Asia. Authors proved that gasification of locally available biomass has up to 2 times lower impact on the environment than utilizing diesel generators. Moreover, authors prove that the global warming potential of anaerobic digestion is even 170% lower than in the case of diesel generators. In general, authors conclude that providing power from residual biomass in small agricultural communities would significantly reduce environmental impact. An energy system for purposes of hotel building, consisting of micro wind turbines, building integrated PV panels, and a double stage heat pump was presented by Calise etal. [9]. Such a design was developed in order to decrease dependence of the user on energy storage, since it is still poorly profitable. Authors suggest that the optimum configuration is adopting one 20kW wind turbine and of PV panels for a 3-floor hotel with in Southern Italy, which leads to a payback period of 5.2 years, and a reduction of primary energy demand by 30%. A study concerning coupling wind turbines and solar energy with electrical storage was presented by Buonomano etal. [10]. Authors analyzed four different users: a supermarket, a tourist centre, a hotel and user offices, with the energy system consisting of a 10kW wind turbine and a 190kWPV field. The impact of utilizing the battery with 400kWh of capacity was also measured. Authors prove that cases with battery show negative profit indexes (PI) in the range between -0.23 and -0.27, while cases based on renewables with support of national grid have a PI between 0.47 and 0.61. In order to reduce dependence on the local grid, a lot of efforts are being made to implement hybrid and polygeneration energy systems into small-scale users. Ref [11] presents a review of such installations. An example is a study presented in Ref.[12] described a system based on solar collectors and solar dish concentrators used as energy sources for heating and cooling purposes. This study shows, that depending on the localization (Southern Poland or Southern Italy), it is possible to satisfy even 99.1% of the cooling energy demand with solar heat, with a primary energy savings ratio between 0.263 and 0.664. The payback period of such installation varies between 8.2 years in case of Italy to even 24 years for Poland. In Ref.[13] authors presented a renewable-based micro-scale trigeneration system with a PV field, a biomass steam cycle, and a wind turbine. The simulated energy installation allowed to decrease the electrical energy needs by 55.9% with only 2.8% of excess energy throughout the year. Ref. [14] describes a dynamic simulation of a trigeneration system with a biomass-fed water-steam cycle and a wind turbine. The authors managed to achieve payback periods of below 5 years for the installation, depending on the assumed costs 2/923/07/2023, 10:03 Energy-economic assessment of self-sufficient microgrid based on wind turbine, photovoltaic field, wood gasifier, battery, an of biomass and the reference scenario. In this case, however, no electrical energy storage has been considered. Ref.[15] describes a simulation of an energy system based on wind turbine, PV field, Rankine cycle based on biomass boiler and battery, with adsorption chiller and reverse osmosis unit. Authors proved that payback periods of such an advanced installation are between 5 and 12 years depending on availability of biomass and price of electricity from the grid. In the mentioned studies, systems achieve relatively short payback periods, however, they are not able to provide an independent power supply, and make it unavoidable to use the power grid. Barone etal. [16] presented a dynamic simulation carried out in TRNSYS software, evaluating an energy system with solar thermal collectors and a wind turbine coupled with a pumped hydro storage system. Part of the energy needs are related to a reverse osmosis unit. In the investigated scenarios, authors achieved satisfaction of 85% of the energy demand provided by renewables, which was due the relatively large capacity of the energy storage. Tarife etal. [17] presented an optimization of a microgrid based on a PV field, diesel generator, and hydropower plant, supported by battery energy storage. In the case of the Philippines, authors achieved a Levelized cost of energy (LCOE) between 0.04 and 0.20 EUR/kWh basing the study only on the optimization approach. A study concerning a fully off-grid hybrid power system was carried out by Hidalgo-Leon etal. [18]. The authors used Homer pro software to simulate an energy system for a community in Ecuador with a PV field and diesel generator supported by a battery storage system. The authors concluded that the best effects in the field of reducing costs of energy are achieved due to connecting efforts in the field of changing energy sources with reducing load profiles. Efforts in the field of linking an island energy system with water infrastructure were made by Cabrera etal. [19]. The authors considered water production and treatment as a flexible load and connected it with PV/wind energy production. Optimization in this field leads to increased penetration of renewables from 5% to nearly 25%. Also, municipal heating systems can benefit from utilization of renewables. Ref. [20] describes a case of a natural gas heating plant in Belgrade, Serbia, where authors proposed to install about of solar collectors to substitute about 25% of natural gas consumption annually. Authors calculated, that such an investment allows to save approximately of natural gas during the summer period and another 240,000m in winter period. An interesting approach to include energy storage in the energy system is the use of electric vehicles (EV) in Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) mode. Prebeg etal. [21] presented a study concerning the long-term energy planning of the Croatian power system. Authors prove, that incorporating V2G energy storage to the power system has a positive impact on regulation of the energy grid during periods with high price of energy, however, it will be necessary to change the energy tariff in order to work sustainably. As it comes to the non-interconnected islands in the Mediterranean region, efforts are being made to replace the fossil fuels with renewable energy, especially with wind energy. Authors in Ref. [22] present an optimized projection of electricity production for Greek islands for the period of 2016-2036. In most cases, production from fossil fuels decreases to values below 10% of the total energy demand, which leads to a decrease of energy costs even 6 times, however, it is necessary to include future development of electrical storage systems. Considering energy storage systems, it is impossible not to mention hydrogen, which is a key element of the energy transition [23]. It is important to notice, that the implementation of hydrogen technologies is characterized by high social acceptance, which makes it easier to fit in the energy mix of a country [24]. Hydrogen is even considered as a source of domestic heat medium [25]. The European Hydrogen Strategy set an electrolyzer capacity target for 2030 at 40GW, however, adding Power-to-Gas systems in the energy 3/923/07/2023, 10:03 Energy-economic assessment of self-sufficient microgrid based on wind turbine, photovoltaic field, wood gasifier, battery, an mix still encounters barriers due to relatively high price of renewable electricity [26]. In order to determine the environmental impact of hydrogen production, different colours of hydrogen are distinguished, however, due to varied potential of renewables in different countries, it is important to introduce an international market for hydrogen [27]. Due to that, efforts are made to provide an efficient method of long- distance transport of hydrogen in gas transport networks with hydrogen injection [28]. Colbertaldo etal. [29] described a long-term model of an energy system in Italy, including Power-to-Gas. Results show that including large renewable energy installations in the energy mix of the country makes coupling Power-to-Gas with the transport sector fruitful, leading to significant decarbonisation of this sector. The study shows, that in the best case scenario, even 81% of the hydrogen mobility demand and up to 57% of the electrical load can be covered with renewables before 2050. An energy system described in [30] consisted of parabolic trough collectors used as a heat source of cascaded power cycles with steam and organic Rankine cycles. The produced electrical output was used to satisfy energy demands of the user and to produce hydrogen. Moreover, authors proposed the use of a thermoelectric generator in order to utilize heat rejected from the ORC unit. Exergy efficiency of such a system achieved a value of 21.9% for a location in Iran. A study prepared by Novosel etal. [31] described a thermal power plant in Slovenia, operated to produce heat, cold, hydrogen and electricity. Moreover, authors considered the possibility of utilizing concentrated solar energy Rankine cycle and wood chips for production of Hydrogen. The exergy efficiency achieved in the simulation process was equal to 24.4%. Adinolfi etal. [32] described a numerical study of including seasonal storage of hydrogen in an industrial cogeneration plant. Authors considered the use of natural gas blends and hydrogen to power an internal combustion engine or a fuel cell. The authors concluded, that the implementation of fuel cells in the installation leads to a decrease of payback period of the whole installation by 16% (1.4 year). Ref.[33] describes the operation of reversible solid oxide fuel cells in four different cases: a hotel, a hospital, an office and a smart city district. Authors prove, that coupling batteries with SOFC allows to achieve the highest reduction of CO2 emissions in comparison with cases without storage, or with only one storage unit. The payback period of the prototype installation reaches over 45 years, which makes the investment non- profitable. Authors claim, that due to reduction of component costs, it will be possible to reduce the installation payback period to 7 years within 2031 year. Ozdemir etal. [34] presented a study concerning a thermochemical hydrogen production facility based on concentrated solar power. Unit based on low temperature Mg-Cl cycle and recompression S-CO2 achieved an exergy efficiency equal to 27%. Sevik [35] described an energy installation connected to the grid, based on PV, gas fired tri-generation system and hydrogen generation unit without energy storage. Authors achieved a LCOE varying between 0.061 EUR/kWh and 0.065 EUR/kWh, with an installation payback period lower than 7 years. A study presented in Ref. [36] an existing prototype of a stand-alone system based on a concentrated PV with two axis tracker, water electrolysis, hydrogen storage and fuel cells. The LCOE achieved in the described case was equal to 0.8 EUR/kWh, which lead to the conclusion that initial costs of stand-alone energy systems based on PV trackers and hydrogen units should be reduced even 4 times in order to achieve competitiveness. However, future development of the technology as well as combining the system with other sources of energy should improve economic parameters. A case study for Catania, Italy, was presented in Ref. [37]. The authors presented a completely self-sufficient energy system based on PV, wind turbine, and hydrogen loop with an electrolyzer, hydrogen storage, and fuel cells. Due to high initial costs caused by the large capacity of the hydrogen loop, the obtained LCOE was equal to 0.721 EUR/kWh. 4/923/07/2023, 10:03 Energy-economic assessment of self-sufficient microgrid based on wind turbine, photovoltaic field, wood gasifier, battery, an It is worth noticing that that the above mentioned studies dealing with hydrogen storage are mainly focused only on this type of storage, rather than coupling it with another type of electrical energy storage. In a previously published paper of the authors of the current paper, four different energy installations with energy storage based both on batteries and hydrogen were described [38]. Depending on the user type, energy was provided from PV, hybrid PV and wind, hybrid PV and biomass, or hydropower. Obtained results show, that in order to ensure constant operation of the energy system it is necessary to oversize the hydrogen storage installation, to minimize energy curtailment. In the presented study, the value of curtailed energy varied between 24.2 and 66.2% for the different cases. The authors in Ref. [39] proposed a hybrid microgrid system that adopts renewable energies, battery energy storage, and a backup diesel generator to satisfy the load demand of Basra, a city in southern Iraq. The proposed microgrid is optimized using a meta-heuristic optimization algorithm (Hybrid Grey Wolf with Cuckoo Search Optimization), and the results are compared with other algorithms to evaluate the optimal sizing of components with minimum costs. Another paper in Ref.[40] proposes a Model Predictive Control (MPC) strategy based on Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) for the optimal dispatch of renewable generation units and demand response in a grid-tied hybrid system. The proposed optimization algorithm seeks the minimum hourly cost of the energy consumed by the demand and the maximum use of renewable resources. The proposed strategy is simulated based on experimental data from an AC micro-grid with small-scale PV/Wind/Biomass systems, hydrogen and battery energy storage, and a demand response program. Ref.[41] describes a simulation of a stand-alone, multigeneration energy system for village communities in different regions of India. The analyzed system consisted of a PV field, electrolyzer, fuel cell, battery energy storage, and metal hydride hydrogen storage. The system is used to produce electricity, heat, water, and hydrogen. Authors prove that such an installation achieves the highest levels of effectiveness in mountainous, humid subtropical, and arid climates. The authors in Ref. [42] proposed a comparison of a hybrid microgrid for a stand-alone energy system in rural areas of India and the UK. The energy system was based on a PV field, wind turbine, and fuel cell with metal hydride-based hydrogen storage. Authors observed, that by comparing a hybrid energy system to one based only on wind energy it is possible to decrease the size of hydrogen storage by up to 97%. Another study [43] presented a parametric study of a stand-alone polygeneration microgrid with battery storage and its comparison with systems based on hydrogen energy storage. The authors concluded that such a system allows for satisfying 93.2% of electrical, 82% of hydrogen, and 48% of thermal load, while 1% of the annual production was marked as curtailed. A study [44] described a numerical study of a user with a peak power load of 7.69kW. In order to satisfy its needs authors proposed an installation consisting of 45kWPV, 25 kW Electrolyzer, 8kW fuel cell and metal hydride hydrogen storage with a capacity of 5kg. Such an energy system allowed to satisfy 91.6% of users energy demand throughout the year with 10.1% of curtailed energy. A study presented in Ref. [45] describes the case of energy installation with hydrogen circuit with PEM electrolyzer and fuel cell, ground-sourced heat pump and building integrated PV. The load analyzed by the authors was a 20-floor residential building with an area of approximately The authors concluded, that it is possible to achieve self-sufficient operation of the building with 495 kWp of building integrated PV and 90 kWp of rooftop PV in the case of Istanbul, Turkey. A study [46] describes a system consisting of PVT panels, a wind turbine, a biomass boiler, a heat pump, an electrolyzer, a fuel cell, a battery, and reverse osmosis unit. The authors proposed the incorporation of such a system into a building with 100 residential units in Iran. The optimization method presented in the study allowed to designate of proper powers of the energy components and life-cycle costing of such installation. Analysis provided by Babatunde etal. [47] described a comprehensive analysis of an energy system with a PV field, micro wind turbine, battery storage, and hydrogen circuit. The proposed energy system was optimized in order to satisfy the daily load of a typical household in Nigeria and South Africa. After comparing all configurations, the authors concluded that the optimal variant of the installation 5/923/07/2023, 10:03 Energy-economic assessment of self-sufficient microgrid based on wind turbine, photovoltaic field, wood gasifier, battery, an in the case of Nigeria has a total net present cost at the level of 9421 USD and levelized cost of energy at 0.756 USD/kWh while in the case of South Africa those costs are 8771 USD and 0.701 USD/kWh respectively. On the basis of the provided literature review, it is possible to note that a significant part of investigations in the field of renewable energy are referring to the reduction of energy dependence, while a notable part of the load is satisfied by the grid or by fossil fuels. Installations with long-term energy storage, allowing to achieve self-sufficient operation throughout the year are not so numerous and mostly offer relatively long payback periods, due to the significant oversizing of energy storage devices and non-complementary energy sources. Moreover, most of the literature papers are focused on the hybridization of PV and wind turbines, while more complex systems integrating three or more technologies are scarce. In general, there is a lack of studies concerning dynamic simulations with the same system composition as the one in Agkistro. In particular, the novelty of the paper results from the incorporation of biomass gasification as a means of base demand satisfaction and the combination of a hydrogen utilization cycle in the same stand-alone energy system with energy-economic assessment included. Moreover, the investigation reported in the present paper concerns also a detailed analysis of the dynamic operation of the system in terms of power levels, which is typically not considered in the actual scientific literature. Thus, the motivation for this study is to expand the knowledge in the field of fully remote small-sized energy installations based mostly on renewables, supported by different types of energy storage. The proposed system consists of a PV field, a wood chip gasifier with an engine, a wind turbine, an electrolyzer with hydrogen storage, a fuel cell, batteries, and a diesel backup generator. The system was investigated with the use of Transient System Simulation (TRNSYS) software on the basis of built-in as well as user-defined models of the components of energy systems. The model is based in part on a previous study of the authors [48]. All of the components used in the simulation were previously validated. The paper presents a dynamic simulation of the described system prepared for Agkistro in Northern Greece, which was selected due to the location of the demo installation. The scope of the paper is to investigate the operating characteristics of the system and measure its energy and economic performance. Section snippets Materials and methods The approach used in this study is widely adopted in literature [9,49,50] when renewable energy systems are investigated by means of dynamic numerical simulation in order to assess their energy and economic performance. In general, the method is based on the calculation of a detailed dynamic behavior of the system, through a model of the system components, the layout of the system, and control strategy, on the basis of which the energy and economic performance is evaluated. The economic Results and discussion The simulation of the system operation was carried out for a period of one year (from 0 to 8760h), with a time step of 4min. Due to the large amount of generated data, detailed results were presented only for three different types of operation of the system on a daily basis, corresponding to i) significant overproduction of renewable energy, ii) complementary production referring to the user load and iii) significant underproduction of renewable energy. The first of these cases is represented 6/923/07/2023, 10:03 Energy-economic assessment of self-sufficient microgrid based on wind turbine, photovoltaic field, wood gasifier, battery, an Conclusions In this paper, a comprehensive investigation of the energy and economic performance of the stand-alone energy system for island purposes is presented under the case of Agkistro, Serres, Greece. The analysis is focused on a system based on a wind turbine, PV field, gasifier, energy storage in the form of batteries, and a hydrogen circuit with an electrolyzer and fuel cell. The adoption of a biomass gasifier as a peak energy source is investigated as well as the system dynamic behavior. The Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper... Acknowledgment This research has been carried out with statutory research funds of the Faculty of Energy and Fuels, AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow. Part of this research was funded by the Polish Ministry of Higher Education on the basis of decision number 0086/DIA/2019/48. Part of this research was funded by the European Union HORIZON 2020 project REMOTE-Remote area Energy supply with Multiple Options for integrated hydrogen-based Technologies, under Grand Agreement Number: 779541. The.. References (61) A. Hirsch et al. Microgrids: a review of technologies, key drivers, and outstanding issues Renew Sustain Energy Rev (2018) K. Tschiggerl et al. Considering environmental impacts of energy storage technologies: a life cycle assessment of power-to-gas business models Energy (2018) M. Zotadek et al. Energy analysis of a micro-scale biomass cogeneration system Energy Convers Manag (2021) K. Sornek et al. 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