fuel cells: indispensable addition to pv?

Fuel Cells: indispensable addition to solar photovoltaics?

Of course there is nothing better than free energy from the sun with a maintenance-free solar photovoltaic system. I enjoy it daily, because the last place not received the subsidy before I continue in the coming years. Yes, I live in Belgium.

In the same country there were, however, measures almost come to be sustainable. All those subsidized photovoltaic systems causing (over)load to the power supply. There would be a kind of feed-in tax to come instead of just higher feed-in subsidy. I will not elaborate on it further, but it does well that the photovoltaics systems are not ready for a sustainable and coal- and nuclear-free future. Beside the not controllable sources such as sun and wind there should be a controllable current source that provides us with power when there is no wind and it's dark.

We will soon have no energy, but a storage and distribution problem. With a large photovoltaic power drawn as in southern Germany, we have already at times such a surplus of electricity that solar fields are disabled by the operator not to work. Their expensive transformer houses are a nightmare for photovoltaic investors, so they really want to save that energy. The same issue again occasionally for large amounts of electricity from wind farms in the North Sea. Looking at the future, is that "occasionally" but more often they produce to much energy. Storage in batteries and electric cars may perhaps provide a few percent, but making hydrogen or synthetic methane seems much more the method for large scale storage of solar and wind energy. Power to Gas (P2G) is therefore the term that you will hear more and more .

Then back to the times when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, you can use fuel cells. The stationary fuel cell (SOFC or also called micro-CHP) is the world's most efficient way to make electricity from gas or at all to produce electricity. In addition, such a device can use green gas , natural gas or synthetic gas (hydrogen) and thus turn use us already available to gas. Distribution of pure hydrogen is in fact still very expensive and will still remain some time. Why not use our existing and highly reliable gas infrastructure?

In future grids with smart local networks, you can use a number of photovoltaic systems, a windmill and a number of fuel cells to power the entire local need for a constant load on the grid. It's currently working on just such an independent local named Ameland. The power plant is of about 45 controllable fuel cells. It has become controlled via the Internet as a "virtual center", but actually with one to three times higher efficiency than today's coal plants.

So no energy, but a storage and distribution challenge. A challenge that I see in the daily increasing further elaborated solar systems.

Jan-Willem Tolkamp, Manager Benelux Ceramic Fuel Cells BV.

Posted by Solar Solutions / in Column / 26/03/2014

http://www.solarsolutions.nl/column/brandstofcellen-onmisbare-aanvulling-bij-zon-pv/