A comparative study of optimal battery storage and fuel cell for a clean power system in remote area

This paper investigates a comparative study on optimal sizing of fuel cell (FC) and battery energy storage (BES) systems coupled with solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind turbine (WT) for a remote area power system. Two system configurations: (1) PV-WT-BES and (2) PV-WT-FC are optimally sized based on actual annual data of wind, solar radiation, ambient temperature and load profile of a remote area community in South Australia. The costs of generation and storage units are considered based on real Australian market prices. The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) is used as the objective function and appropriate optimization constraints are considered for each system. It is found that the BES technology is more economic than FC system for power system design in Australian remote areas. However, the PV-WT-FC system results in lower dumped energy. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to investigate the effects of the FC system price and its efficiency on LCOE and dumped energy of the system. The option of adding reactor/reformer to the FC system to produce hydrogen from the human waste is also studied in terms of optimal capacities, economic and dumped energy.