Hydrogen storage based micro-grid: A comprehensive review on technology, energy management and planning techniques

There has been a steep increase in the global micro-grid market. The micro-grid provides integration of different types of renewable and nonrenewable technologies. The integration of an efficient energy storage system is essential to handle the intermittency problems associated with renewable energy sources (RES). The majority of micro-grids make use of battery storage systems (BSS). There are several drawbacks associated with BSS viz. large size, low life cycle, and high cost. In this respect, the hydrogen-based storage system (HSS) has attracted the attention of system planners as an effective alternative. The HSS provides requisite support to curb the variability of RES and helps to maintain system reliability. The HSS produces hydrogen when excess power is available from RES. The stored hydrogen can further be put to several other applications besides generation of electric power. Thus, HSS is emerging as a promising technology that can be used alone/in conjunction with BSS to increase the viability of micro-grid through its diversified applications. The objective of this paper is to present a comprehensive review on different aspects of HSS based micro-grids. Various problems affiliated with traditional storage systems have been discussed to assert the importance of HSS in micro-grid applications. The review is initiated with an overview of HSS comprising of electrolyzer, hydrogen storage unit and fuel cell. The micro-grid planning and economic optimization approaches with particular reference to HSS based micro-grids are discussed in detail. Finally, a summary of literature survey identifying research scope in HSS based micro-grid has been discussed.