Engineering Science and Technology, an International Journal (Apr 2021)
Design and optimization of a solely renewable based hybrid energy system for residential electrical load and fuel cell electric vehicle
Abstract
Due to increasing energy demand, limited fossil fuels and increasing greenhouse gasses people is in need for alternative energy sources to have a sustainable world. The objective of this study is to look for alternative solutions and design a hybrid energy system to meet any energy needs of a single family house including both utility and transportation. The system is designed and optimized using HOMER software. According to the optimization studies, levelized cost of electricity and hydrogen production was found to be 0.685$/kWh and 6.85$/kg, respectively and the cost of hydrogen which is half of its market price is very attractive. To project possible future costs in advance, sensitivity analysis was carried out and the results show that when the main components’ price decays to the half, both costs of energy will be reduced by 26.4%. This implies that further decrease on the components’ cost would bring the cost of energy to the level of energy produced by fossil fuels or even lower. Hydrogen would also be produced with much lower and tempting price. It is important to note that energy used by residential electrical load and fuel cell electric car in this study was generated by sole renewable energies and the system consumes zero fossil fuels, thus emitting no greenhouse gasses. The study considering both utility and transportation simultaneously is believed to be the first on a small scale and to attract the interest of everyone.
