A Rule-Based Energy Management System for Remote Area Hybrid Standalone Energy Systems with Hydrogen Energy Storage Systems to Improve the Reliability

The variability of RESs and their intermittent output power against the stochastic energy consumption, especially for standalone hybrid power systems, have spurred the development of new long-term energy storage solutions for improving the reliability in remote areas. Currently, the reliability of remote area hybrid standalone energy systems is affected due to the absence of long-term energy storage systems, as existing systems include batteries that are not capable of ensuring short-term reliability. Hence, there is an ongoing discussion on solar-powered water electrolysis systems to produce and store hydrogen utilizing excess generation, which can later be to generate electricity through fuel cells for providing long-term storage solutions. Though new long-term hydrogen storage solutions can improve the reliability, the optimal utilization of different components of remote area hybrid energy systems having solar photovoltaic systems, batteries, electrolyzers, hydrogen tanks, fuel cells; is a complex issue and the overall techno-economic benefits will be significantly affected if the energy coordination among different components is not properly carried out. This paper proposes a rule-based energy management system (RL-EMS) for appropriately coordinating energy in remote area hybrid energy systems and determining optimal sizes of different components so that the overall system cost is reduced while meeting the supply-demand balance. Simulations are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed RL-EMS under changing power supply and load demand conditions. The simulation results confirm that the RL-EMS assist in meeting continuously changing load demands (with a maximum load of 20 kW) through a 20 kW solar PV, 5 kW battery, 10 kW fuel cell, 12 kW electrolyzer, and a 10 kg hydrogen tank, while achieving a minimum levelized cost of electricity of $0.2743 per kWh and improving the reliability.