Techno-Economic Assessment of Hydrogen Usage in a Smart Grid, Employing a Staggered Optimization Algorithm

A sustainable energy economy implies high shares of volatile renewable energy sources and requires the use of energy storage technologies. Hydrogen is a very flexible energy carrier and can be employed as a large-scale energy storage in electric grids. This paper focuses on the integration of hydrogen production, conversion and storage options in a smart grid environment. A process current source (PCS) that functions as a rectifier for an alkaline electrolysis system and is compared to a conventional rectifier structure that is not specifically designed for dynamic operation. All components of the smart grid are scaled using a staggered algorithm that combines a pattern search algorithm and a genetic algorithm. This smart optimization tool shows high flexibility, accuracy and low computing times. The required computing time has been reduced by 56% in contrast to genetic algorithms without the pattern search method. Furthermore, the energy system optimization reduced the alkaline electrolysis below 30% of the initial scale in order to yield lower costs. Therefore, the difference in rectifier performance was reduced to a minor contribution.