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Energy storage systems are critical for enabling the environmental benefits associated with capturing renewable energy to displace fossil fuel-based generation, yet producing these systems also contributes to environmental impacts through their materials use and manufacturing. As energy storage capacity is scaled up to support increasingly renewable grids, the environmental benefits from their use may scale at different rates than the environmental impacts from their production. This implies the existence of capacity thresholds beyond which installing additional storage capacity may be environmentally detrimental. Identifying such thresholds are important for ensuring that energy storage capacity selection in future grids are consistent with net emissions reduction goals, but such thresholds have not been studied in the present literature. To identify such thresholds, here we combine electric grid dispatch modeling with life cycle analysis to compare how the emissions reductions from deploying three different flow battery energy storage types on a future California grid (>80% wind and solar) compare with emissions contributions from producing such batteries as total battery capacity installed on the grid increases. Depending on the type of battery and environmental impact indicator (greenhouse gas or particulate matter emissions), we find that the marginal environmental benefits of storage begin to diminish at deployed capacities of 38–76% of the mean daily renewable generation (256–512 GWh in our California scenarios) and reach zero at 105–284% of mean daily renewable generation (700–1810 GWh). Such storage capacities are conceivable, but upstream impacts of storage must be assessed in evaluating the environmental benefits of large-scale storage deployment, or they could negate the environmental benefits of regional electricity system decarbonization.

Climate change and increased electrification of space and water heating in buildings can significantly affect future electricity demand and hourly demand profiles, which has implications for electric grid greenhouse gas emissions and capacity requirements. We use EnergyPlus to quantify building energy demand under historical and under several climate change projections of 32 kinds of building prototypes in 16 different climate zones of California and imposed these impacts on a year 2050 electric grid configuration by simulation in the Holistic Grid Resource Integration and Deployment (HIGRID) model. We find that climate change only prompted modest increases in grid resource capacity and negligible difference in greenhouse gas emissions since the additional electric load generally occurred during times with available renewable generation. Heating electrification, however, prompted a 30-40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions but required significant grid resource capacity increases, due to the higher magnitude of load increases and lack of readily available renewable generation during the times when electrified heating loads occurred. Overall, this study translates climate change and electrification impacts to system-wide endpoint impacts on future electric grid configurations and highlights the complexities associated with translating building-level impacts to electric system-wide impacts.

The hybridization of gas turbine technology with high temperature fuel cells represents an ultra-high efficiency, ultra-low emission, fuel flexible power generation platform. The performance of past prototypes has been limited by marginal compatibility of the two primary sub-systems. This paper addresses the challenge of selecting compatible hardware by presenting a simple and robust method for bespoke hybrid system design and off-the-shelf component integration. This is the first application of detailed, spatially resolved, physical models capable of resolving off-design performance to the integration analysis of FC-GT hybrids. Static maps are produced for both turbine and fuel cell sub-systems that readily evaluate the compatibility and hybrid performance. Molten carbonate and solid oxide fuel cells are considered for hybridization with recuperated micro-turbines and larger axial flow gas turbine systems. Current state-of-the-art molten carbonate technology is shown to pair well with present micro-turbine technology in an FC bottoming cycle design achieving 74.4% LHV efficiency. Solid oxide technology demonstrates remarkable potential for integration with larger scale axial turbo-machinery to achieve greater than 75% LHV efficiency. This performance map technique closely matches results from detailed integrated hybrid system analyses, and enables quick determination of performance requirements for balance of plant design and optimization. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Fuel cell gas turbine hybrid systems have achieved ultra-high efficiency and ultra-low emissions at small scales, but have yet to demonstrate effective dynamic responsiveness or base-load cost savings. Fuel cell systems and hybrid prototypes have not utilized controls to address thermal cycling during load following operation, and have thus been relegated to the less valuable base-load and peak shaving power market. Additionally, pressurized hybrid topping cycles have exhibited increased stall/surge characteristics particularly during off-design operation. This paper evaluates additional control actuators with simple control methods capable of mitigating spatial temperature variation and stall/surge risk during load following operation of hybrid fuel cell systems. The novel use of detailed, spatially resolved, physical fuel cell and turbine models in an integrated system simulation enables the development and evaluation of these additional control methods. It is shown that the hybrid system can achieve greater dynamic response over a larger operating envelope than either individual sub-system; the fuel cell or gas turbine. Results indicate that a combined feed-forward, P-I and cascade control strategy is capable of handling moderate perturbations and achieving a 2:1 (MCFC) or 4:1 (SOFC) turndown ratio while retaining >65% fuel-to-electricity efficiency, while maintaining an acceptable stack temperature profile and stall/surge margin. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This work builds upon previous high temperature fuel cell (HT-FC) modeling studies, capturing both steady state performance and transient behavior of HT-FC stacks by merging simplified dimensional aspects of a planar fuel cell stack with first principles physical modeling. Dynamic simulations are developed that spatially resolve fluctuations in temperature, pressure and concentration distributions during transient operation. A significant portion of the heat transfer occurs prior to and after the air passes over the electrochemically active portions of the cell, justifying additional heat transfer pathways from the stack to the air in order to accurately characterize the thermal transients and temperature distributions in the HT-FC stack. The highly configurable MatLab-Simulink® model developed can simulate both solid oxide and molten carbonate fuel cells utilizing either direct or indirect internal reforming. The perturbation response characteristics of the dynamic model to load, fuel flow, air flow and composition perturbations are discussed, and control strategies are introduced that minimize temperature fluctuations. Analysis indicates air flow and inlet temperature controls are sufficient to control average temperature and average internal temperature gradients. Internal heat transfer dynamics substantially change the spatial temperature distribution and local temperature gradients during typical operating conditions and perturbations. © 2013, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights.

Hybrid fuel cell gas turbine sensitivity to ambient perturbations is analyzed using experimental and dynamic simulation results. Experimental data gathered from the world's first pressurized hybrid SOFC-GT system tested at the University of California, Irvine, capture performance variations due to diurnal temperature oscillations. A dynamic modeling methodology demonstrates accuracy, robustness, and clearly identifies critical system sensitivities that require additional control systems development. Simulation results compare favorably with dynamic experimental responses. Predictions of component temperatures, pressures, voltage and system power exhibited 5 °C, 2 kPa, 2 mV, and 0.5% error respectively. Moderate ambient temperature fluctuations, 15 °C, caused variations in stack temperature of 30 °C, and system power of 5 kW. Small to moderate changes in fuel composition produced 30 °C shifts in stack temperature and 25% changes in system power. Simple control loops manipulating fuel cell air flow through SOFC bypass and inlet temperature through recuperator bypass are shown to effectively mitigate internal temperature transients at the expense of reduced system output. The observed temperature fluctuations resulting from typical environmental perturbations are of concern for performance loss and diminished longevity. Experiments and dynamic simulation results indicate the importance of integrated control systems development for hybrid fuel cell gas turbine systems. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This study compares the production of hydrogen with high temperature fuel cells (HTFCs) that tri-generate power, heat and hydrogen to distributed and centralized steam methane reformation (SMR) supply chains. The defined supply chain steps of hydrogen production include: production, treatment, distribution, storage, dispensing and use. Different technologies for each step in the supply chain have been analyzed from an energy standpoint, resulting in ten different supply chain scenarios. Results show that liquefaction of hydrogen is the most energy intensive of all the treatment processes and that it is only effective for long delivery distances. When the energy required for the hydrogen treatment (i.e., liquefaction, compression) is included, it is shown that compressed gas hydrogen at 200 bar is the least energy intensive for delivery distances shorter than 84 km if transported by diesel truck. For distances longer than 84 km, 500 bar compressed hydrogen is more efficiently transported than at 200 bar compressed hydrogen. For distances larger than 550 km, liquefied hydrogen is more efficiently distributed than compressed hydrogen at 500 bar. Results show that the highest supply chain efficiency corresponds to distributed hydrogen production via tri-generating HTFC (∼76%) followed by centralized SMR with 500 bar compressed hydrogen distribution (∼71%). The lowest supply chain efficiency values correspond to distributed SMR plants (∼60%) and centralized SMR with transportation of hydrogen in liquid form (

A spatial and temporal analysis of wind power generation characteristics was conducted in order to determine the implications of intermittent wind generation dynamics on the profile of the electric loads that must be balanced by dispatchable electrical generators on the electric grid. A parametric analysis was conducted to evaluate the sensitivity of the typical magnitudes of wind power fluctuations on different timescales, power variation range, typical daily and seasonal wind profiles to wind farm size and regional distribution. A methodology to evaluate wind dynamics based on power spectral density analyses have been developed. Results indicate that increasing the size of a local wind farm significantly reduced the magnitude of wind power fluctuations on timescales faster than 12 h, with the largest reductions occurring at the fastest timescales. Additional reductions in power fluctuations can be achieved with the implementation of local and regional distribution of wind turbines in disperse high wind areas. In these cases, it was discovered that the timescale band within which the largest reductions in power fluctuations occurred was dependent on regional geographic features, and did not necessarily correspond to the fastest timescales. In addition, it was also discovered that the aggregation of wind power from different regions could produce a more uniform frequency distribution of power fluctuation reductions. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.

The use of a high temperature fuel cell (HTFC) to continuously and simultaneously polygenerate hydrogen in combination with electricity and heat represents a promising technology as a source of fuel for fuel cell vehicles. Different configurations of polygenerating HTFC, including different designs with internal and external reforming are options to polygenerate electricity, hydrogen and heat. The current study analyzes and compares six different configurations based on solid oxide technology. Efficiency results based upon the Supplemental Input Method demonstrate that internal reforming configurations achieve higher performance than when hydrogen product is produced in an external reformer. The overall efficiency and the efficiency in the generation of each product are used as the basis for comparison. © 2011, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

High temperature fuel cells can be designed and operated to poly-generate electricity, heat, and useful chemicals (e.g., hydrogen) in a variety of configurations. The highly integrated and synergistic nature of poly-generating high temperature fuel cells, however, precludes a simple definition of efficiency for analysis and comparison of performance to traditional methods. There is a need to develop and define a methodology to calculate each of the co-product efficiencies that is useful for comparative analyses. Methodologies for calculating poly-generation efficiencies are defined and discussed. The methodologies are applied to analysis of a Hydrogen Energy Station (H 2ES) showing that high conversion efficiency can be achieved for poly-generation of electricity and hydrogen. © 2010 Elsevier B.V.

The challenges associated with incorporating a large amount of distributed generation (DG), including fuel cells, into a radial distribution feeder are examined using a dynamic MATLAB/SIMULINK™ model. Two generic distribution feeder models are used to investigate possible scenarios where voltage problems may occur. Modern inverter topologies make ancillary services, such as on-demand reactive power generation/consumption economical to include, which expands the design space across which DG can function in the distribution system. The simulation platform enables testing of the following local control goals: DG connected with unity power factor, DG and load connected with unity power factor, DG connected with local voltage regulation (LVR), and DG connected with real power curtailment. Both the LVR and curtailment strategies can regulate the voltage of the simple circuit case, but the circuit utilizing a substation with load drop compensation has no universal solution. Even DG with a penetration level around 10% of rated circuit power can cause overvoltage problems with load drop compensation. The real power curtailment control strategy creates the best overall circuit efficiency, while all other control strategies result in low light load efficiency at high DG penetrations. The lack of a universal solution implies that some degree of communication will be needed to reliably install a large amount of DG on a distribution circuit. © 2010 American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Barriers to fuel cell commercialization are often introduced as general challenges, such as cost and durability, without definition of the terms and usually without prioritizing the degree to which each of these barriers hinder the development of fuel cell technology. This work acts to objectively determine the importance of technology barriers to fuel cell commercialization and to develop a list of appropriate actions to overcome these barriers especially as they relate to the California market. Using previous fuel cell roadmaps and action plans along with feedback from the fuel cell community, benchmarks (i.e., the current technology status), and milestones (i.e., the desired technology status) for fuel cell technology are explored. Understanding the benchmarks and milestones enables the development of a list of fuel cell commercialization barriers. These barriers or gaps represent issues, which if addressed will enhance the market feasibility and acceptance of fuel cell technologies. The research process determined that the best technique to address these barriers, and bridge the gaps between fuel cell benchmarks and milestones, is to develop specific research projects to address individual commercialization barriers or collections of barriers. This technique allows for a high resolution of issues while presenting the material in a form that is conducive to planning for organizations such as industry, regulatory bodies, universities, and government entities that desire to pursue the most promising projects. The current analyses resulted in three distinct research and development areas that are considered most important based on the results. The first and most important research and development area is associated with technologies that address the connection and interaction of fuel cells with the electric grid. This R&D area is followed in importance by the production, use, and availability of opportunity fuels in fuel cell systems. The third most important category concerned the development and infrastructure required for transportation related fuel cell systems. In each of these areas the fuel cell community identified demonstration and deployment projects as the most important types of projects to pursue since they tend to address multiple barriers in many different types of markets for fuel cell technology. Other high priority types of projects are those that addresses environmental and grid-related barriers. The analyses found that cost/value to customer, system integration, and customer requirements were the most important barriers that affect the development and market acceptance of fuel cell technology. Copyright © 2010 by ASME.

A 100 MW-class planar solid oxide fuel cell synchronous gas turbine hybrid system has been designed, modeled, and controlled. The system is built of 70 functional fuel cell modules, each containing 10 fuel cell stacks, a blower to recirculate depleted cathode air, a depleted fuel oxidizer, and a cathode inlet air recuperator with bypass. The recuperator bypass serves to control the cathode inlet air temperature, while the variable speed cathode blower recirculates air to control the cathode air inlet temperature. This allows for excellent fuel cell thermal management without independent control of the gas turbine, which at this scale will most likely be a synchronous generator. In concept the demonstrated modular design makes it possible to vary the number of cells controlled by each fuel valve, power electronics module, and recirculation blower, so that actuators can adjust to variations in the hundreds of thousands of fuel cells contained within the 100 MW hybrid system for improved control and reliability. In addition, the modular design makes it possible to take individual fuel cell modules offline for maintenance while the overall system continues to operate. Parametric steady-state design analyses conducted on the system reveal that the overall fuel-to-electricity conversion efficiency of the current system increases with increased cathode exhaust recirculation. To evaluate and demonstrate the conceptualized design, the fully integrated system was modeled dynamically in MATLAB-SIMULINK. Simple proportional feedback with steady-state feed-forward controls for power tracking, thermal management, and stable gas turbine operation were developed for the system. Simulations of the fully controlled system indicate that the system has a high efficiency over a large range of operating conditions, decent transient load following capability, fuel and ambient temperature disturbance rejection, and the capability to operate with a varying number of fuel cell modules. The efforts here build on prior work and combine the efforts of system design, system operation, component performance characterization, and control to demonstrate hybrid transient capability in large-scale coal synthesis gas-based applications through simulation. Furthermore, the use of a modular fuel cell system design, the use of blower recirculation, and the need for integrated system controls are verified. © 2010 by ASME.

Operating strategies of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) combined heat and power (CHP) systems are developed and evaluated from a utility, and end-user perspective using a fully integrated SOFC-CHP system dynamic model that resolves the physical states, thermal integration and overall efficiency of the system. The model can be modified for any SOFC-CHP system, but the present analysis is applied to a hotel in southern California based on measured electric and heating loads. Analysis indicates that combined heat and power systems can be operated to benefit both the end-users and the utility, providing more efficient electric generation as well as grid ancillary services, namely dispatchable urban power. Design and operating strategies considered in the paper include optimal sizing of the fuel cell, thermal energy storage to dispatch heat, and operating the fuel cell to provide flexible grid power. Analysis results indicate that with a 13.1% average increase in price-of-electricity (POE), the system can provide the grid with a 50% operating range of dispatchable urban power at an overall thermal efficiency of 80%. This grid-support operating mode increases the operational flexibility of the SOFC-CHP system, which may make the technology an important utility asset for accommodating the increased penetration of intermittent renewable power. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A commercially available natural gas fueled gas turbine engine was operated on hydrogen. Three sets of fuel injectors were developed to facilitate stable operation while generating differing levels of fuel/air premixing. One set was designed to produce near uniform mixing while the others have differing degrees of nonuniformity. The emission performance of the engine over its full range of loads is characterized for each of the injector sets. In addition, the performance is also assessed for the set with near uniform mixing as operated on natural gas. The results show that improved mixing and lower equivalence ratio decrease NO emission levels as expected. However, even with nearly perfect premixing, it is found that the engine, when operated on hydrogen, produces a higher amount of NO than when operated with natural gas. Much of this attributed to the higher equivalence ratios that the engine operates on when firing hydrogen. However, even the lowest equivalence ratios run at low power conditions, higher NO was observed. Analysis of the potential NO formation effects of residence time, kinetic pathways of NO production via NNH, and the kinetics of the dilute combustion strategy used are evaluated. While no one mechanism appears to explain the reasons for the higher NO, it is concluded that each may be contributing to the higher NO emissions observed with hydrogen. In the present configuration with the commercial control system operating normally, it is evident that system level effects are also contributing to the observed NO emission differences between hydrogen and natural gas. © 2009 by ASME.

Adding distributed generation (DG) is a desirable strategy for providing highly efficient and environmentally benign services for electric power, heating, and cooling. The interface between a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), typical loads, and the electrical grid is simulated in Matlab/Simulink and analyzed to assess the interactions between DG and the electrical grid. A commercial building load profile is measured during both steady-state and transient conditions. The load data are combined with the following models that are designed to account for physical features: a One-Cycle Control grid-connected inverter, a One-Cycle Control active power filter, an SOFC, and capacitor storage. High penetration of DG without any power filter increases the percentage of undesirable harmonics provided by the grid, but combined use of an inverter and active power filter allows the DG system interconnection to improve the grid tie-line flow by lowering total harmonic distortion and increasing the power factor to unity. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper analyzes and compares transient and steady-state performance characteristics of different types of single-shaft turbo-machinery for controlling the air through a pressurized solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) stack that is integrated into a SOFC/GT pressurized hybrid system. Analyses are focused on the bottoming part of the cycle, where the gas turbine (GT) has the role of properly managing airfiow to the SOFC stack for various loads and at different ambient conditions. Analyses were accomplished using two disparate computer programs, which each modeled a similar SOFC/GT cycle using identical generic gas turbine performance maps. The models are shown to provide consistent results, and they are used to assess: (1) the influence of SOFC exhaust composition on expander behavior for on-design conditions, (2) the off-design performance of the bypass, bleed, and variable speed controls for various part-load conditions and for different ambient conditions; (3) the features of such controls during abrupt transients such as load trip and bypass/bleed valve failure. The results show that a variable speed micro-turbine is the best option for off-design operation of a SOFC/GT hybrid system. For safety measures a bleed valve provides adequate control of the system during load trip. General specifications for a radial GT engine for integration with a 550 kW pressurized SOFC stack are identified, which allow operation under a wide range of ambient conditions as well as several different cycle configurations. Copyright © 2007 by ASME.

A two-dimensional dynamic model was created for a Siemens Westinghouse type tubular solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC). This SOFC model was integrated with simulation modules for other system components (e.g., reformer, combustion chamber, and dissipater) to comprise a system model that can simulate an integrated 25 kw SOFC system located at the University of California, Irvine. A comparison of steady-state model results to data suggests that the integrated model can well predict actual system power performance to within 3%, and temperature to within 5%. In addition, the model predictions well characterize observed voltage and temperature transients that are representative of tubular SOFC system performance. The characteristic voltage transient due to changes in SOFC hydrogen concentration has a time scale that is shown to be on the order of seconds while the characteristic temperature transient is on the order of hours. Voltage transients due to hydrogen concentration change are investigated in detail. Particularly, the results reinforce the importance of maintaining fuel utilization during transient operation. The model is shown to be a useful tool for investigating the impacts of component response characteristics on overall system dynamic performance. Current-based flow control (CBFC), a control strategy of changing the fuel flow rate in proportion to the fuel cell current is tested and shown to be highly effective. The results further demonstrate the impact of fuel flow delay that may result from slow dynamic responses of control valves, and that such flow delays impose major limitations on the system transient response capability. Copyright © 2006 by ASME.