Solar electricity storage through green hydrogen production: A case study
Armand Fopah‐Lele, Amelie Kabore‐Kere, Jean Gaston Tamba, Isdeen Yaya‐Nadjo
Abstract
Electricity storage technologies appear as one of the solutions in most African country's national electrical grids issues. In this context, hydrogen production from renewable could be used to testing their ability for energy storage. It is possible to recover grid losses through hydrogen production and reinject it into the grid. This research aims at demonstrating numerically and experimentally how much renewable hydrogen can be produced in a sub-Saharan African context (Cotonou, Benin). Solar photovoltaic coupled to a proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer is built to demonstrate the hydrogen production followed by a model validation. The developed model accounting for all irradiation (not only the global horizontal) is simulated on MatLab-Simulink, and results fit the experimental data significantly. Results show 19% efficiency for solar hydrogen production of 115 L·day−1 knowing that lead-acid battery is included. Limits to the production rate are the storage pressure in the metal hydride tanks and the available electricity to be stored. Economic analysis through levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) shows that production of hydrogen from solar photovoltaic is about 1.09 €·m−3 under the present conditions. Storing renewable electricity through hydrogen might be cost-effective when disregarding certain constraints.