Coordinated Power Balance Scheme for a Wind-to-Hydrogen Set in Standalone Power Systems

To conserve energy and reduce carbon dioxide emissions, deploying renewable sources into power systems have been on the rise. Due to the intermittency and variability of renewable sources, energy storage technologies have been employed to provide long-term energy balance by managing the power flow and responding to the output fluctuation from renewable resources. This paper proposes a coordinated power balance (CPB) scheme for a wind-to-hydrogen set, which consists of a type-4 wind turbine generator (WTG), a proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer, and a fuel cell system (FCS). The proposed CPB control scheme aims to meet the supply and demand of electricity in a standalone power system while enhancing the efficiency of a WTG by utilizing a PEM electrolyzer and FCS in parallel with the DC capacitor of the WTG. To achieve these, the proposed CPB scheme employs a grid-forming inverter for a WTG and realizes the imbalance between supply and demand by detecting voltage variation at the DC capacitor; then, to balance the supply and demand, the CPB scheme utilizes an electrolyzer and FCS to produce hydrogen from surplus power and convert it back to electricity when increase in demand. The CPB scheme was tested under various scenarios using PSCAD.