Production of Hydrogen from Wind and Hydro Power in Constrained Transmission grids, Considering the Stochasticity of Wind Power

Abstract

Producing hydrogen from renewable energy sources can be used as a way of extracting large quantities of energy from remote regions far from load centers. These regions have weak transmission grids and building new transmission lines are expensive due to large distances. The tight restrictions on the power systems in these regions makes daily operation difficult and unexpected variations in wind power production can have significant negative impacts, such as rationing of power.

A stochastic rolling horizon model is formulated and implemented to consider the importance of including wind power stochasticity when operating flexible hydrogen loads in a congested power system. Wind power scenarios are created using realized wind power production and meteorological weather forecasts. The resulting operation plans of hydrogen storage and hydro power plants, using expected values or wind power scenarios, are tested and compared in a simulator with the realized wind power production.

Results from the case study show that the stochastic model gives a better strategy than the deterministic model which use the expected value of wind production by about 5.6% and there is potential for further cost reductions by improving the forecasting. When including more than 27 wind power scenarios the changes in results are small. The case study also shows that hydrogen storage is important to avoid rationing in certain situations and increase power flow.