Hybrid plant of renewable stochastic source and multilevel storage for emission-free deterministic power generation

The market for distributed energy resources expands rapidly. Two distributed energy sources that are at the center of interest in this context are wind energy converters and fuel cells. While renewable energy based and environmentally benign, a major problem of wind energy conversion with regard to large-scale network integration is the direct dependence of the power generation capability on the given wind speed. Similar problems of controllability exist for other renewable energy sources with intermittent output. This conflicts with the need to schedule power output in a deterministic manner. A concept to overcome the stochastic nature of the source is proposed. The overall solution consists of a plant where the stochastic source is coupled over a DC bus with diverse storage modules and a versatile grid interface. As storage solutions hydrogen and in addition a second form of storage for quasiinstantaneous power delivery is considered. The intermittent source is so transformed into an emission-free deterministic generation plant with controlled power output to the grid.