Impact of thermal recovery and hydrogen production of fuel cell power plants on distribution feeder reconfiguration

In this study, the operating benefits of considering thermal recovery and hydrogen production in the economic model of a grid-parallel proton exchange membrane fuel cell power plant (PEM-FCPP) are investigated. Also the study considers the simultaneous effect of distribution feeder reconfiguration (DFR) on the operating management of PEM-FCPPs in a stochastic environment. In this regard, a new method based on a probabilistic approach called point estimate method (PEM) is proposed to consider the uncertainty associated with the load demand prediction error as well as the variation of (i) price of natural gas for PEM-FCPPs, (ii) tariff for buying electricity from PEM-FCPPs and the grid, (iii) tariff for selling electrical energy, (iv) operation and maintenance cost, (v) hydrogen selling price and (vi) fuel cost for supplying residual loads (thermal energy). The objective functions to be optimised are the total active power losses, the total emission produced and the total cost related to the grid and PEM-FCPPs. As a result of conflicting behaviours of the investigated objective functions, an interactive fuzzy approach is utilised to let the decision maker to apply his/her preferences to the system. The feasibility and efficiency of the proposed method is shown through the use of Tai-power distribution test system.