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The continuous growth of non-programmable renewable energy resources penetration leads to unpredictable oscillations of the net load faced by dispatchable power plants, hindering the reliability and stability of the electric grid and requiring additional flexible resources. The EU project GRASSHOPPER focuses on MW-scale Fuel Cell Power Plant (FCPP) based on low temperature PEM technology. The project aims to setup and demonstrate a 100 kWel PEM FCPP, flexible in power output and designed to provide grid support. This work presents a dynamic simulation model of the FCPP, developed to simulate plant flexible operation and identify the best management strategy, aiming at optimizing the efficiency while reducing the degradation rate. Cold start up simulations, according to a warm-up procedure limiting stack degradation, result in a time to operation equal to 26 minutes. A sensitivity analysis is performed to determine which parameters mostly influence the warm-up duration, showing that it is possible to reduce start-up time substantially (e.g. down to 3 minutes with component preheating). On the other hand, simulations at variable load along the entire range of operation (20-100 kWel), according to grid balancing requirements, show that the plant is able to ramp up and down between the minimum to the maximum load in about 40 seconds.

Among the possible solutions for large-scale renewable energy storage, Power-to-Gas (P2G) and Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) appear very promising. In this work, P2G and an innovative type of CAES based on underwater storage volumes (UW-CAES) are compared from a techno-economic point of view, when applied in combination with a 48 MWe offshore wind power plant, selecting an appropriate location for both high productivity and favorable seabed depth. An optimization model is employed to study the system design and operation, maximizing the lifetime plant profitability, while considering differential installation and operation costs, market values of the products (i.e., hydrogen and electricity), and technological constraints. In the current economic and technological scenario, the resulting P2G system has a nominal power equivalent to about 10% of the wind park capacity, with a small hydrogen storage buffer. On the other hand, the compressor and the turbine of the UWCAES have a nominal power close to the full wind farm capacity, and large underwater compressed air tanks are required. Both options significantly impact the wind plant management but the most beneficial applications of the two systems are different: the P2G results in a compact and flexible unit, whereas the UW-CAES is able to exploit a higher average conversion efficiency (about 80% round-trip) against a much higher installed power and investment cost. Anyway, considering the current framework, the resulting economics are still inadequate, but their competitiveness can improve compatible with the expected evolution of energy markets in the next future.