International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology (IJEST) – Submitted to EFEEA 2010, Symposium on Environment Friendly Energies in Electrical Applications, 2-4 November 2010, Ghardaia Algeria 1 Design and Sizing of a PV/Fuel Cell/Batteries hybrid power system for a seasonal hydrogen storage with a practical application M. BOUHALA 1 , A. KHELLAF 2 , S. HANINI 1 , 1 Faculty of Engineering and Sciences, University of Medea, Algeria. 2 Renewable energy Center, Bouzareah, Algiers, Algeria Abstract— This paper proposes a PV/Fuel Cell/Batteries hybrid power system designed and sized to supply continuous power to the load. For achieving this purpose and overcome the intermittence of solar radiation, PV panels are used to convert solar irradiation to electrical power. When PV output power exceeds the load, the excess of electrical energy is stored as hydrogen energy in a seasonal hydrogen storage system by using electrolytic process. Rechargeable batteries can be coupled with the hydrogen system as en energy system. When PV power is less than the load, the stored hydrogen is converted to electrical power via the fuel cell system. The sizing method of the power system is based on energy balance equations with the PV panels facing south and latitude inclined. For modeling solar daily radiation on horizontal panels, the Angstrom model has been used. The estimation of the solar radiation incident on tilted panels is carried out by using the isotropic model. Iterative computing process is used to estimate the optimum surface of the PV panels. Finally, the amount of stored hydrogen is determined during sunny days at which the solar daily irradiation exceeds the storage threshold for hydrogen storage. To simplify the calculation, long term characteristics of the basic system components are assumed to be constant. The method is applied to the University of as a practical example. Index terms— Autonomous, Electrolysis, Energy, Hydrogen, Fuel Cell, Photovoltaic, Storage,. I. INTRODUCTION The world energy demand has increased rapidly due to the increase in world population, in industrial activities and in the appearance of new industrial countries as China, Brazil and India. Due to the great danger of pollutants and greenhouse gases emitted in the atmosphere from fossil fuels, the Kyoto Protocol and the Johannesburg Summit oblige countries to reduce their emissions to less than 10%. This couldn’t be achieved without the use of sustainable and cleaner sources of energy such as renewable energy resources. Today, the main preoccupation of energy experts is to develop new technologies to produce electrical energy from solar radiation, wind and geothermal resources; with less pollution, more efficient and low cost systems. Solar radiation as known is intermittent. This main disadvantage requires a storage system. For this purpose, electrical energy could be stored as hydrogen and chemical energy in rechargeable batteries. Solar irradiation could be converted directly to electrical energy by using PV panels, than electrical energy is converted to hydrogen by electrolytic process. The stored hydrogen could be converted again to electrical energy via a fuel cell system. In 1992, Barra, L. et Coiante have proposed a method to size a PV/Hydrogen autonomous system capable to replace a the 2 MWp Diesel power station installed to supply Volcano Island located in Sicilia, south Italy [1]. In 2006, Nelson, D.B., et al., have done a techno - economical procedure to evaluate a hybrid power station based on PV/Wind/Fuel Cell proposed to supply a house located in Montana, USA. They have used the LPSP technic to size their system [ 2] . Another techno- economical procedure has been proposed in 2006 by Zoulias and Lymberopoulos. They have found that PV/Hydrogen system could be used instead of conventional diesel power station [3]. S.R. Vosen et J.O. Keller en 1999 [S.R. Vosen, J.O. Keller, 1999] in 1999 have published a method for the optimization of the Solar/Hydrogen system performance using neural network to control the system [4]. In the present work, we propose to use a hybrid PV/electrolyser/Fuel cell autonomous system capable of meeting the needs of the university of Medea II. SYSTEM MODELING Figure (1) shows the configuration of PV/Fuel Cell/Batteries system to be studied. As shown, PV system generates an output electric power P PV . The PV power is then conditioned to the value of the electric load P L via DC/DC and DC/AC devices. EFEEA’10 International Symposium on Environment Friendly Energies in Electrical Applications 2-4 November 2010, Ghardaïa, Algeria 1