Synergistic control between hydrogen storage system and offshore wind farm for grid operation

Wind energy is achieving worldwide acceptance as the most appealing renewable resource. Due to its increasing portion of generation mix, wind farms are expected to play the role similar to the traditional power plants. Down the road toward this goal, the intermittency and uncertainty of wind are the two important factors that should be solved. Today, storage systems present a very interesting alternative to deal with the wind variability. Among various storage types, the hydrogen system is showing a promising future due to the high storage efficiency, low emissions, and wide applications. This paper presents a new coordination control scheme between the offshore wind farm and a hydrogen management system (HMS) for reducing the adverse impacts of wind variability. In the proposed scheme, the HMS is situated onshore to provide medium- to long-term energy balancing service. A supercapacitor bank is supplemented to the system for providing the short-term transient compensation. System configuration and control strategies are also presented. Simulation tests were conducted to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed control. Test results indicate that the proposed control makes the wind farm be more flexible to satisfy the grid operation.