Eric Parker, Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office: Hello, everyone, and welcome to November's H2IQ Hour, part of our monthly educational webinar series that highlights research and development activities, funded by the US Department of Energy's Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office, or HFTO, within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. My name is Eric Parker, and I'm the HFTO webinar lead. As always, we'll be announcing more topics like this one soon, so be sure to stay tuned on our website and newsletter.
This WebEx call is being recorded, and will be posted to DOE's website and used internally. All attendees will be on mute throughout the webinar, so please submit your questions via the Q&A box you should see in the bottom right of your WebEx panel. We will cover those questions during the Q&A portion, during the final 15 minutes of today's H2IQ Hour. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to our DOE host, Brian Hunter, to introduce today's topic and speaker. Thanks, Brian.
Brian Hunter, Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office: Yeah, thank you, Eric. So on behalf of the Department of Energy's Hydrogen Fuel Cell Technologies Office, I want to welcome you to the H2IQ presentation. Today, we're going to learn about research activities at the National Renewable Energy Lab, or NREL, to evaluate tests and validate the innovation of hydrogen production technologies with the electric grid.
Over the past several years, NREL has been evaluating the potential for electrolyzers to help stabilize electric demand while producing valuable hydrogen _____ and various applications, such as hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, as well as providing backup power.
Today's H2IQ Hour will be highlighting the findings from NREL's research and demonstration efforts, validating how electrolyzers can support grid services. For example, we're going to hear about how electrolyzers can help minimize demand spikes from intermittent fast battery – electrical vehicle fast charging, by providing constant power demand, or producing hydrogen for other end uses. In addition, we're going to be discussing how these efforts will support both departmental as well as the area-wide initiatives, including our _____ initiative, which is focused on enabling wide-scale affordable hydrogen production, storage, transport, and use across multiple sectors, as well as NREL's Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems, or ARIES platform, which allows NREL researchers as well as other stakeholders to address fundamental challenges of integrated energy systems at scale.
So it's my pleasure to introduce our speaker, Kaz Nagasawa. Kaz is a postdoctoral researcher in the Energy Conversion And Storage Systems Center at National Renewable Energy Lab. His research interests include energy systems modeling with a focus on hydrogen and fuel cell systems, as well as smart grid application. Kaz received his PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and also has a master's and bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Nihon University in Japan. So with that, Kaz, I'll go ahead and turn the floor over to you. We are seeing your slides. Thank you.
Kazunori Nagasawa, National Renewable Energy Laboratory: Thank you, Eric and Brian, for hosting this event. I'm glad to be here today. Also, thanks, everyone, for joining this webinar. I know some of you are having like Thanksgiving week, so I really appreciate your participation.
My name is Kaz Nagasawa, and today, I'd like to talk about electrolyzer grid integration study. The main idea is we'd like to have a better understanding of how _____ electrolyzer can respond, and how an electrolyzer can support _____ grid _____. With that, I'm going to start with a quick background and the motivation of this project. Then I'm going to talk about the three applications: one, electrolyzer characterizations, two, dynamic electrolyzer control, and three, integrated electrolysis and fast charge station.
And as Brian mentioned, I'll briefly talk about the overview of the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems, ARIES Initiative. And I'll conclude my talk with key takeaways. And by the way, the guy standing in the middle is me, Kaz, and I'm talking about the electrolyzer _____ in front of the electrolyzer with my colleagues Jen and Rishahb. And Rishahb is an essential team member, because he's a expert in power systems engineering.
First, I'm going to start with the H2@Scale vision, and this vision, the graphic shows how hydrogen can be interacted with existing infrastructure, such as electric grid and gas infrastructures.
On the left hand side, we have primary energy, such as renewables, nuclear, or fossil fuel, to generate electricity. And since the electric grid needs to be balanced, over time, we can utilize the conventional storage system, such as batteries, and battery _____ great _____ efficiency, and the response time is very quick. However, at scale, we can leverage some hydrogen storage as a long term energy storage.
To do so, we can use the electrolyzer to produce hydrogen from electricity and water, and the produced hydrogen can be used for various end use applications, and I'm going to talk about these in the next slide. And also, hydrogen can be _____ in the gas infrastructure.
The main point here is grid integrated electrolysis plays an important role in the H2@Scale vision, and that's the topic of my talk today.
And the reason why we are working on this project is there are several potential benefits of electrolyzer grid integration. One of the benefits is we can reduce energy usage and emissions in end use applications in particular like transportation applications, like fuel cell electric vehicles, or heavy duty applications. Also, like chemical processes, such as metals refining, fertilizer production, have high carbon emissions, so if we use hydrogen produced from electrolyzer, we can reduce those carbon emissions _____. And as I mentioned in the previous slide, hydrogen can be blended in the natural gas _____, which could improve the fuel performance as well as the emissions. And we can use fuel cells to generate electricity and also heat, as combined heat and power, and then can be used for critical activities, such as hospitals or data centers.
At the same time, we have another benefit, that is we can improve grid performance, reliability, and the resiliency. Since the electrolyzer is a flexible load, so we can change the _____ of electrolyzer, and we can stabilize demand for an integrated system, which could also _____ curtailment of renewables, and the ultimately, we can mitigate potential frequency disturbances in the grid.
The main point here is using electrolyzer system on the grid could provide cross-_____ and cross-_____ solution, and that's why we are working on this project.
And as a test bed, one of the test beds, we have ESIF, or Energy Systems Integration Facility. That has a couple of features and attributes. One I'd like to highlight is hydrogen system and chemistry labs. So we have hydrogen production, compression, storage, and dispensing capability. And these hydrogen systems can be integrated in different _____ systems, like REDB connections, or real time _____, or other equipment, like batteries _____ _____ and so on.
And these systems can be integrated to study hardware and control experimentation, and also, we can use for – use the hardware-in-the-loop testing, using this capability.
So this is the front of the ESIF building, and behind the building looks like this. And here, we have a data center, high performance computer, we get to use. And also, for the different projects, we have a fuel cell system to provide some electricity needed for the data center processing. In the back of the ESIF, we have the hydrogen system integration area. I'm going to show some schematics of this area.
So we have hydrogen production using electrolyzer system, and produced hydrogen can be stored in the tanks here. We have low pressure, medium pressure, and high pressure storage tanks, and _____ stored hydrogen can be used for fueling, for fuel cell _____ electric vehicles.
And for different projects, we are expanding these capabilities around this area to incorporate heavy duty depot application. And also, stored hydrogen can be used for fuel cell systems to generate electricity, and these systems can be integrated in the ESIF _____.
So our first topic is electrolyzer characterization. As Brian mentioned, we worked on the electrolyzer system in the past few years, and around this time, we had 40 kilowatt PEM electrolyzer system, and 120 kilowatt PEM electrolyzer system, and we have tested the real time _____, like real time systems.
And I'm first going to show some results of the system level response times for the PEM electrolyzer system. This graph shows the scenario _____ scenario, and on the X axis we have time, and on the right access current, using the electrolyzer system. The dashed line represents our control _____ _____, and the solid line shows the response of the electrolyzer system. And this figure is showing that after the control is triggered, electrolyzers respond, and electrolyzer has a sub-second response time, or within one second, and which could potentially add flexibility and stability to the grid from the demand side.
We also analyzed the ramp down scenario, and similarly, we have a sub-second response time, and that can be used for grid integration.
So because of these electrolyzer characteristics, we studied dynamic electrolyzer control, and focusing on distribution and transmission applications. Particularly, we are looking at the voltage disturbances and the frequency disturbances of those grid applications. And at the time, we have 225 kilowatt PEM electrolyzer system _____.
So first, I'm going to go through the quick background of the distribution grid application. The main objective is to maintain power quality. So if we have large DER or distributed energy resource, such as solar or wind, we have a voltage _____. So we would like to maintain those voltage on levels.
The traditional approach is to use tap changers. That is a mechanical device that change the tap condition to regulate the voltage level.
But what we are proposing here is we'd like to use a network of electrolyzers. So that's the approach we are taking. And here is the result. And _____ the result. And the top panel shows the electrolyzer response in kilowatts, and in the middle panel shows the full activity profile. This is a normalized profile, so this is showing sometimes like 10 percent of the PV generation and sometimes 100 percent of the PV generation, very, very cloudy day.
And the bottom panel shows the _____. So what's interesting here is based on the _____ profile, so variable generation, electrolyzer is going to ramp up or down to mitigate those voltage disturbances. Here, the gray line represents the control – _____ electrolyzer control. It's the baseline case. And the blue line represents electrolyzer control. As you see in this _____ area, so we have the – without the electrolyzer system, there are these disturbances _____, but having the electrolyzer system _____. So having an electrolyzer system can mitigate voltage fluctuations across the system.
And _____ quantify the tap operation. Here, we analyzed the renewable penetration level for 25 percent and 50 percent. Also, we analyzed the different deployment scenarios. That is, no electrolyzers, electrolyzers near substations, and electrolyzers near PV systems.
So what's showing here is having larger penetration in the 50 percent, we have increased tap operation _____ here. And also, another aspect is if we locate electrolyzer systems near the variable sources, we can reduce the tap operation. And this dashed line – this is hard to see, but this is the baseline tap operations for the US grid.
So having electrolyzer system can reduce wear and tear of tap changers, and that results in we can reduce cost burden of maintaining grid reliability.
Also, we analyzed and quantified the count and magnitude of the voltage disturbances, and frequency here in the gray bar means the count number, and the magnitude in orange. And similarly, if we have the high penetration level, and if we locate it near the PV generation system, these performance metrics reduce.
But the interesting thing is if we have lower penetration levels, the trend is not consistent. So what I'd like to highlight here is electrolyzer optimization is not optimized, and it's important to understand how _____ in coming years or decades, and _____ electrolyzers. So this is another _____.
And I'm going to switch gears a little bit to talk about the transmission grid application. The main idea and objective is to maintain system balancing. That includes frequency regulation and system inertia support. The traditional approach is to utilize generation reserves to regulate the equipment power exchange. And what we are proposing here, again, is to use a network of electrolyzers.
And this result, and I know this is a busy slide, but I'm going to go through it step by step. And on the left hand side, we have a scenario of load loss. We are losing the load in the transmission grid. In this case, we have time on the X axis and frequency on the Y axis, and result electrolyzer control in blue. We have the large frequency deviation, and at the same time, it is showing large oscillation of the frequency.
But having electrolyzer system that can ramp up or down to the need of this grid, _____ the system has a relatively constant frequency. So having electrolyzer has the benefit of mitigating frequency disturbances.
On the right hand side, we have a scenario of line loss, where we are losing the line, for example, due to a hurricane or other kind of disaster. So in this case, without the electrolyzer system, the frequency deviation is large, and also _____, and also, it takes time to settle down to a certain range. But having electrolyzer system can reduce the deviation, oscillation, and also shortens the settling time. So that's another benefit of using electrolyzers on the bulk grid.
And from the – up to here, I talked about the kind of broader scope of how electrolyzers can be used for grid applications. Here, I'm going to more focus on the distribution side and the pass through applications, that is, integrated electrolysis and fast charge station.
Here, this is a recent work. We got a new _____ 750 kilowatt PEM electrolyzer system, and we are going to evaluate the ability of the electrolyzers to stabilized integration station power demands. That is the objective of this study.
So here is the basic concept of an integrated fueling station. The main objective of this study is to develop scalable, real-time control test bed that has EV fueling station, using model – whatever the load, the generation assets, including PV plant or wind plant. And we are going to use electrolyzer as the active demand management to mitigate those intermittent demands. And we are planning to use this as a test bed, so modularity is important. For example, we can add _____ here to provide some power, if needed. So that is the concept of this project.
First, I'm going to talk about the EV charging demand in the next slide. Here, _____ panels show the low deployment scenario, and that has one plug rated at 50 kilowatt, which represents current fast chargers. And this figure shows that people come to the station and charge their vehicles, and the maximum period is about 40 kilowatts at this time _____. And some people come to the station at 6:00 AM or 9:00 AM, and then charge their vehicle about half of the capacity.
So the main point here is from the holistic perspective, people tend to charge in the afternoon hours, and also people tend to charge in the morning hours. And that is the low deployment scenario.
And for the high deployment scenario that uses 20 plugs rated at 400 kilowatts each, and this scenario has a different profile. So people tend to come to the station throughout the day, and – but there are simultaneous charging events _____ like 15 or 3:00 PM. And this is very challenging, because the ramp up or ramp down can be a megawatt scale. And this is upper bound – this scenario represents upper bound of high power DC fast charging station operation. So it's important to analyze from our software _____ hardware _____.
And this is the EV charging _____, and I'm going to talk about some of the renewable – like in this case solar PV scenarios, because having solar PV profiles, we are able to mitigate or reduce this peak demand.
So this is the result analysis, and we – in the system, we have EV systems, building load, and PV system. The color scheme also _____ with this graph. And here, what is showing, we have a EV profile, building slot, load, and also solar PV generation. And what the utility sees – it's a network here, and what's showing here is having PV system can reduce some of the peak demand, but at the same time, that it's creating some ramp down or ramp up from the net load perspective.
So it's important to analyze this aspect if you integrate in different systems. So we are proposing here, again, to use electrolyzer system. In this case, we have 750 kilowatt capacity of the electrolyzer system, and that could achieve the constant net load. And this is a _____ an idealistic scenario.
And what it's showing here is electrolyzer is going down or up as needed to stabilize the intermittent demand. And we quantified how much hydrogen can be produced during this week, and the result shows that hydrogen produced is about 200 kilograms per day, which is about 40 to 50 _____ fuel cell electric vehicles. They can charge those vehicles per day.
So we can stabilize the grid, and at the same time, we can produce hydrogen. So that's the result showing here. And this 750 kilowatt capacity is _____ we have _____ is kind of large enough to mitigate those fluctuations here. Without the electrolyzer system here, we have fluctuated load, but with the electrolyzer system, it's a flat line.
The next question here is what if we have a lower capacity, like for example, 400 kilowatts or 200 kilowatts, and the result's showing here. We studied the different electrolyzer capacity, and then analyzed the standard deviation of the net load. And these figures show that having lower electrolyzer capacity, about 200 kilowatt, we have a fluctuated net load. And also, having a solar PV profile, we still have fluctuated net load. But electrolyzer is ramping up and down, but still, standard deviation is large.
So what I'd like to highlight here, it is important to analyze electrolyzer sizing, and _____ size electrolyzer creates a variable net load. And this is _____ result, and we analyzed the real time simulation, because in terms of the actual implementation in the hardware _____, we like to develop these control algorithms. So we used RSCAD, our grid modeling tool, and then analyzed the real time behavior using _____ real-time digital simulators. And we analyzed low, moderate, and high _____ scenarios, as well as different PV penetrations, 0 percent or 50 percent, and we considered optimized like _____ standard deviations, and then analyzed the undersized and oversized electrolyzer scenario.
And now I'm going to show these three scenarios today, and here is the result of the real time simulation. With optimally-sized electrolyzer system, the net load is relatively constant, but as you might see, there is some of the _____ deviation. And this is a close-up. Red is the control signal output based on the control algorithm. The black line is optimized control _____ from optimization model. That is the flat line. So that is within the ten percent of deviation margin, and the error is within about three percent. And three percent or less is important, because in this case, the fluctuating network results in 50 kilowatt or 100 kilowatt _____ deviation. So from the utility standpoint, it's important to mitigate those fluctuated load as well. So that's why we have developed this real time control algorithm to _____ refine the control algorithm.
And the next slide shows the under-sized electrolyzer system. As we expected, we cannot control _____ at certain level, because the lower size of the electrolyzer system. So electrolyzer reaches the maximum capacity during the day, and results in significant deviation from the optimal control request. So that is _____ real world system, so that's why we used the simulation at this moment.
And we also analyzed the over-sized electrolyzer system, and during this time, the electrolyzer cannot go down further, because the electrolyzer system has a minimum operating load _____ like ten percent, so electrolyzer cannot go down further. And that is a limitation to electrolyzer ramp-down response.
So another approach to mitigate this problem is if we have a multiple electrolyzer system, like _____, we can control _____ electrolyzer to _____ some of the ramp-down, so that can be _____. So that's why we analyzed this over-sized, under-sized, and optimal-sized electrolyzer system.
And at ESIF, we have 750 kilowatt electrolyzer stack. That was built in July. And we completed some of the shakedown testing and readiness verification to make sure electrolyzer is fine and operating safely. So we are expecting to do some dynamic validation testing when that's possible, and we are planning to do different EV scenarios, and our main concept or main goal is to refine the control request by control algorithm with actual hardware systems. That's what we are planning to do in coming weeks or months.
And now I'm going to switch to the ARIES, or the Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems.
So ARIES is a platform to try to address the three fundamental challenges. One challenge, first challenge, is the physical size. So we have load generation and storage, and those sizes are different, and this variability is very challenging to consider the whole energy system.
And at the same time, the second challenge is securely controlling large numbers. So as you might see, we have EV and rooftop solar PV. We have large numbers of generation, load, and storage. And the core challenge we'd like to address is integration, integrating multiple diverse technologies, like those EV or PV, as well as electrolyzer system that I mentioned in my earlier presentation. That can be challenging. _____, we'd like to address these three questions, and also, we'd like to reduce three aspects, or focus on the three aspects that is reducing our risk, and optimize the whole energy system, and secure the current energy system. The ultimate goal is to provide insight into the design and operation of the future energy system. So that's why we are working on this ARIES _____, to answer those questions.
And at NREL, we have integrated capability for ARIES. So I talked about a lot for the ESIF, Energy Systems Integration Facility, and also, we have the Integrated Energy Systems at Scale, or IESS. And this is a campus I'll call Flatirons Campus, formerly called National Wind Technology Center, so that's why you see the wind turbines there in the pictures. So this is located a bit far from here, but the point is, we can connect these facilities' physical assets to answer the questions.
And this is a schematic of how we connect each physical asset. On the right hand side, we have ESIF. It has electric vehicle or like smart appliance, water heater, battery _____, and also PV inverter. But these devices or energy system _____ storage, the physical site is less than two megawatts. As I mentioned before, we have 750 kilowatt on electrolyzer system, and also, electrolyzer can be a load. It goes up like _____ operation.
But once we connect it to the IESS at the Flatirons campus, the physical size goes up to 20 megawatts. And also, that could include wind farm, utility-scale solar, and other assets, battery storage, to incorporate generation and storage, and also transmission/distribution. So once we connect these different _____, we can understand a holistic view of the generation and storage to the loads and storage. So that is really important. But at the same time, it still has some limitations, because 20 megawatt scale is not big enough or large enough, but if we consider for instance like West Texas that has like 20 gigawatts of wind turbines, or 30 gigawatts now, so it's challenging to analyze those large networks. So that's why it's critically important to have and develop a virtual emulation environment.
So in the ARIES _____, we are going to look at these three aspects, ESIF, IESS, and virtual emulation environment, or platform, to answer – to have differentiating characteristics. So here on the top right it shows a schematic. We have ESIF and IESS and virtual emulation environment. And the main core point _____ aspect is we have the modeling and analysis and also hardware capabilities, so we tried to couple this expertise to understand the infrastructure at scale.
And also, it's – another aspect is the complex system configuration. So we have IESS and ESIF and also virtual emulation. We can scale up the system up to the megawatt or gigawatt, if needed, _____ emulator system. So the whole point is we'd like to have a better understanding of the entire system, from generation, demand, and storage. So this is a real world problem, so that's why we needed a platform to understand this behavior and dynamic characteristics.
And also, another aspect is it is critically important for the partnerships, so we'd like to form a strategic partnership across national labs as well as industry.
And this is a schematic of the partnership. And in the past, for the electrolyzer system, electrolyzer project, we closely worked with the Idaho National Lab, or INL. They figured out the control algorithm for the PEM electrolyzer system, and we remotely connected those real time simulation devices. So they send us the control set points, and then we execute it, the control set points, using the physical assets. So remote connection is a key – one of the keys.
So that allows us to leverage the existing assets, so hardware assets, as well as their knowledge and expertise. For example, in this case, INL has high temperature electrolyzer capabilities, and also nuclear aspect. So we'd like to connect the knowledge and hardware assets to answer those three fundamental ARIES questions and challenges.
And ARIES has five research areas that include energy storage, power electronics, and hybrid systems, future energy infrastructure, and cybersecurity.
And our first topic is energy storage. So as I mentioned in the earlier slide, so having large penetration in renewables can be challenging from the grid operation perspective. So this topic is a purpose-driven integration and control, and using flexibility and security as performance metrics, we'd like to accelerate the diverse technologies, that include electrochemical, molecular, thermal, and mechanical storage. And as I mentioned before, it is important to analyze the whole energy system to optimize the controls. So storage is important for optimized control for the different assets. Also, different energy storage _____, for example, electricity and hydrogen.
And the second topic is advancing power electronics. And as I mentioned, as was showed in the previous slide, we have large servers, and that is an inverter-based control, but the question here is what is the appropriate power electronics for the electrolyzer system? For example, in that case, we can develop power converter specific to the electrolyzer system, and we can develop actual hardware and also control of the _____ actual control algorithm to suit it for those applications.
And the third area is a hybrid approach. So one of the topics I talked about today is integrated fueling station, and this is part of the hybridization. So we need – we'd like to optimize those dynamic controls of diverse technologies, the recharging or electrolyzers or even like electrolyzer end use applications for transportation or other use. So we'd like to understand the interdependencies and effects of those devices. And the ultimate goal is we'd like to quantify the hybridization benefits, like value stacking, so how much like voltage or frequency disturbance is caused, or how electrolyzer can mitigate or maximize the revenue of the energy system.
And the fourth topic, the future energy infrastructure of NREL. We have the capability to analyze large energy systems by using _____ to analyze the _____ forecast how the electrolyzer is going to grow or evolve in coming years _____. But here, using ARIES platform, we'd also like to understand and make sure that infrastructure is protected. So that's why we need to _____ this capability to test and validate those controls and operations. And ultimately, we'd like to improve the efficiency and stability of the future infrastructure.
The last topic is cybersecurity. So this is a growing area of research at NREL. So as I mentioned in the previous slides, so every device is connected and using networks, so that's why it's important to analyze the cybersecurity aspects, because one failure can create cascading effect, and that could cause a lot of failures in the energy network. So that's why cybersecurity is important.
And this is the current ARIES capability at Flatirons campus. So we have PV systems, and also wind turbines, and _____. So this can be operated as an islanding mode, so that we can provide power as needed. And we are planning to incorporate some hydrogen infrastructure that include 1.25 megawatt electrolyzer system, and also .25 megawatt fuel cell system. And this hydrogen system can be integrated with the integrated grid. That can be either AC or DC input or output.
And for another project, we are using these hydrogen assets as a long term energy storage, so that's why we are going to have 600 kilograms of hydrogen ground storage.
This slide is _____ of the 27 hours of the electrolyzer system and 40 hours of the fuel cell system as a buffer.
And this is the key takeaways. The electrolyzer has a sub-second response time, and that can be used for the grid integration. And integrating electrolyzer systems in the grid helps improve grid performance, reliability, and resiliency. I showed electrolyzer grid integration can reduce the number of tap operations, decrease the frequency deviations, and shorten the frequency settling time. And also, I showed how the electrolyzer can mitigate the intermittent BEV fast charging demand. Also, I briefly talked about the ARIES initiative that is trying to answer the three fundamental challenges.
With that, I'm going to end my talk, and happy to take any questions.
Brian Hunter: Thank you very much, Kaz. There's a number of questions that have been submitted. I've been trying to group them, so that we can hopefully talk about each topic separately. And early on, there was a lot of questions about hydrogen blending and injection and natural gas pipelines. And Cory did address that in the – at least one of those questions in the Q&A chat. So I'm going to skip that for now and come back to it if we have time.
But we wanted to talk a little bit more about integration with renewable energy and grid integration first. So you talked briefly about how electrolyzers can help enable solar energy technologies. Can you also talk about how electrolyzers can help optimize performance of wind turbines?
Kazunori Nagasawa: So in the past, we have like wind to hydrogen project. That is about ten plus years ago. And that showed – and there is a report, and that showed how electrolyzers can stabilize the intermittent _____ profile, based on those three turbine sizes.
And recently, we are also focused on the wind technology and electrolyzer integration, specifically for the offshore wind application, because offshore wind in the United States, even like across Europe, is like having a large aspect or impact in coming years and decades. So we have some _____ _____ we have done on wind technology in the past, and – but at the same time, we are trying to do more analysis on the wind side in coming years.
Brian Hunter: Great. And I guess can you talk fundamentally about how electrolyzers help mitigate frequency distortions?
Kazunori Nagasawa: Yeah. So electrolyzer, so frequency is an international problem, so electrolyzer is – can be used as a flexible load, so go up and down, and that could respond to the frequency deviation, based on the – whatever the frequency disturbance, line load or line decrease or line load. So we are using the _____ control, so based on the electrolyzer _____, we are going to control the frequency in the grid system.
I'm not the best person to answer the question, but I'm happy to answer like – I'm happy to take follow-up answer, if you need it, if you send me an email.
Brian Hunter: Great. Thanks, Kaz. So we've got a couple of questions on combining electrolyzers with large scale – grid scale batteries, and how that would work, and one of the questions is how do you use an electrolyzer from _____ to grid scale batteries _____ in respect to response time, value of hydrogen versus more electricity, and grid stabilization?
Kazunori Nagasawa: So in terms of – what I talk about today, integration of _____ hardware validation, and the different _____ worked on to answer those questions. For example, like having battery system, or even like further, like pump hydro, or like long-term energy storage _____ hydrogen.
And recently, I joined a _____, and the answer of using hydrogen system _____ can be included for like a couple of days, even like 30 days or so, as a storage device. So that is a challenge or like tradeoff, the cost of the hydrogen system, as well as cost of the battery.
So in general, hydrogen has a better performance for the long term energy storage, but also, it's important to _____ applications. So hydrogen can play some role for the shorter period of time, if needed. I think I didn't answer it very well, but that is my understanding at this moment.
Brian Hunter: Great. And then has NREL done any studies considering the placement of electrolysis and fueling stations within the distribution center for maximizing generation potential on multiple sites within the system, like distributed production, I guess within the refueling station or infrastructure?
Kazunori Nagasawa: On distributed hydrogen production for refueling station?
Brian Hunter: Yeah, basically –
Kazunori Nagasawa: Is that the question?
Brian Hunter: Yeah, I think the question is around collocating the electrolysis and hydrogen production with the refueling stations.
Kazunori Nagasawa: Okay. I think our team didn't work – like what I presented, it's not focused on that aspect, but other teams at NREL worked on that holistic understanding of the US hydrogen network, and where we store, and where we place the hydrogen production systems. So I don't have the immediate answer or the specific answer to the questions, but at NREL, we have that capability, and actually, there is a modeling software, I believe. So for the distributed hydrogen production or fueling.
Brian Hunter: Yeah, and we received a similar question around kind of the economics, does it make more sense to produce electrolysis at the charging station or the fueling station, or is it cheaper or lower cost to produce hydrogen say at a wind farm and then transport it to the station?
Kazunori Nagasawa: Yeah. Actually, one of my dissertation topics is about – like takes up hydrogen, and how wind – like hydrogen produced by wind can be used in the demand center in Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston, in Texas Triangle. So it takes like _____ from the wind farm to the demand centers, so I analyzed how like electrolyzer – or how hydrogen can be produced – either like centrally generated on the wind farm, or we use grid to produce hydrogen at the demand side.
But the main important aspect is the transmission lines. We in _____ large transmission lines in Texas, but at the same time, we have a growing wind penetration. So I think the answer can be both. So we can have centralized system _____ distributed system, so it does depend on the geographic location and end use applications.
Brian Hunter: Great. And I guess related to the topic you presented on using electrolyzers to balance battery electric fast charging, can you provide some more detail on planned electrolyzer hardware in the loop experiments for the integrated station with hydrogen fueling and battery charging?
Kazunori Nagasawa: So we have 750 kilowatt electrolyzer system _____, and we are almost ready to do hardware testing. And we have demand profile, like three demand profiles, low, moderate, and high demand profile for the EV system. So we are planning to first use the moderate case, because that is similar _____ high _____ electrolyzer capacity, like 100 kilowatt scale.
And using that configuration, like hardware validation _____, we are going to expand the higher capacity, in terms of for like megawatt scale _____ EV charging scenario. In that case, we need to use some scaling factors to make electrolyzer capacity large. So that we've done in the past for those distribution and off-grid systems. So we are going to use some scaling factors, and then improve the control performance.
So improving the control algorithm is the key for the hardware validation of this study. And at the same time, we can also improve _____, because constant _____ ideal, like in the early morning or in the late afternoon, like you can produce hydrogen with cheap electricity at that time that demand is not high. So we can also improve the control algorithm _____ algorithm as well to maximize the revenue at the substation.
Brian Hunter: And Kaz, those hardware in the loop experiments are happening at the Energy Systems Integration Facility at NREL? Is that correct?
Kazunori Nagasawa: Yes, that is correct. But for – yeah, for the EV charging – yeah?
[Crosstalk]
Brian Hunter: Okay. And then can you also talk about the timing of the planned hydrogen infrastructure at the Flatirons Campus at the Integrated Energy Systems at Scale?
Kazunori Nagasawa: Yeah. If I remember correctly, for the 1.25 megawatt electrolyzer system, and like quarter megawatt fuel cell system, so we did the purchase order, and we are planning to have systems sometime next year or two years from now. I think that's the rough timeline, but everything is coming –
[Crosstalk]
Cory Kreutzer, National Renewable Energy Lab: Hey, I can jump in there, Kaz, and help answer that question.
Brian Hunter: Hey, Cory.
Cory Kreutzer: So – hey. Kaz is right. The timeline is essentially to get that hardware infrastructure in place for Flatirons Campus, those assets in by around September of 2021, but we are dependent upon the lead time of some of those items. So that's a tentative plan, is to get all the hardware in place within the 2021 calendar year, and then clearly immediately move into research question answering thereafter.
Brian Hunter: Sounds good, Cory. Thank you. And then kind of as a follow-on, how do universities and other stakeholders partner with NREL to leverage the ARIES capabilities?
Cory Kreutzer: Yeah. So there's a lot of opportunity there, a lot of options. I think just reaching out to technical contacts at NREL is a good first start. We can bring in contracting and company – or, I'm sorry, contracting representatives from NREL as well to talk through the different options for how we structure an agreement. So there's a lot of options, but step one is to basically make contact with somebody at NREL in the technical space.
Brian Hunter: Great. And is your contact information on a slide somewhere here? If folks have follow-up questions or want to contact you regarding partnerships?
Cory Kreutzer: Yeah. So Kaz is there on that slide, and I can also post something into the chat as well.
Kazunori Nagasawa: Yeah, that'd be great.
[Crosstalk]
Kazunori Nagasawa: And I covered many aspects, so feel free to send me an email, and I can point you to the right researchers at NREL.
Brian Hunter: Great. Thanks, Kaz. Yeah, and then a couple of folks were asking if this presentation will be available after the webinar. I know we're recording the webinar. Is this presentation also posted on the website, Eric?
Eric Parker: Yes, it is. That's a good question. We publish both the recording and a PDF of this presentation on the HMTO website. Make sure to check back in or around a week or go. Given it's a holiday week, it might be a little bit longer, but around a week.
Brian Hunter: Okay. Thanks, Eric. Here's an interesting question on kind of the H2@Scale vision, and the ARIES initiative. The question is saying must ARIES assume grid as the primary gather and transmission and storage distribution system with hydrogen as an adjunction, or may we assume the reverse? So it's talking about grid _____ by 2050, and is it sub-optimal to use the current electric grid? So maybe we can talk a little bit about the – how the hydrogen infrastructure ties into both natural gas system as well as the electric grid.
Cory Kreutzer: Yeah, I could try to tackle this one, to some extent. So the whole point of the ARIES platform is to be able to answer diverse questions about complex hybrid energy systems. And so I think what was described in the question is a good example of that, and I think it's situationally dependent. So you need to configure your system, your microgrid, whatever you're looking at, and then answer that question specifically. I don't think there's a universal answer. And so that's why we have the ARIES platform, is to help us answer these types of questions as they're configured in these large permutations that are available.
Brian Hunter: All right. Thanks, Cory. There's a couple of questions in here regarding kind of how the hydrogen is used that is produced by electrolyzers, what the end uses are, whether it's using fuel cells to regenerate electricity, or whether the hydrogen's used primarily in vehicles or other uses. There's also a couple of questions about potentially using the hydrogen to create electricity using turbines. So if you can just talk generally about the end uses for the hydrogen that's being produced.
Kazunori Nagasawa: Cory, would you like to cover?
Cory Kreutzer: Yep, no problem. So there's a lot of opportunities here for end use applications. We've spent time in research at NREL looking at light duty vehicle fueling. We're moving now into heavy duty vehicle fueling pretty considerably. Other end use potential includes marine and aviation space, as well as the injection of hydrogen into the natural gas grid, whereby it could be used for various end use applications that are already utilizing natural gas.
And so the end use applications are quite varied, and we're continuing to explore kind of the highest opportunity areas for those end use applications specifically. So yeah, I think it's most valuable to speak generically to it, because there a lot of opportunities in the end use application space.
Brian Hunter: Great. Thanks. There was a question just confirming that the fuel cell that's been installed at the Flatirons area campus, is that a PEM technology, and I believe it is.
Cory Kreutzer: Yep.
Brian Hunter: There's also a couple of questions about how PEM electrolyzers compare to AM or alkaline electrolyzers.
Cory Kreutzer: Yeah, so our group is primarily focused on systems level research at the stack scale, so we've placed most of our emphasis on PEM technologies, understanding there's the competing technologies, or complementary is probably a better term for it, technologies that are coming into play.
So I think there's better expertise at NREL to answer those specific questions, if that's of interest. So please follow up, and we can provide you the best contact for kind of those more detailed questions regarding technology considerations for the different electrolyzer approaches.
Brian Hunter: Great. I just had one kind of general – more general question. What do you see as the biggest challenges for deploying electrolyzer on the electric grid? Is it a technology challenge, an economic challenge, or regulatory challenge? Or?
Cory Kreutzer: Kaz, do you want to try taking that one?
Kazunori Nagasawa: Yeah. I think, like everything, but I think economic analysis is really important. And another team at NREL is primarily focused on the economic analysis. And also, we believe _____ hardware validation is also important to prove the capability of the electrolyzer system, so that like having this kind of webinar is important, because, hey, electrolyzer can do this, XYZ, and then people have better understanding of how electrolyzer can support the grid's needs, and that can regulate what change _____ or regulation as well. So yeah, I think everything, but –
[Crosstalk]
Cory Kreutzer: Yeah, so I would add to that that it's – in a lot of ways, it's the convergence of those things. So we need to have low cost electricity, we need to have as inexpensive electrolyzers as possible, with as high as up time and high as performance as possible, and we need to have specific systems evaluated where it makes sense to deploy electrolysis systems, and we need to have end use applications in place to utilize that hydrogen downstream of production.
And so what we need to do is we need to have a convergence of all those things in order to have significant market penetration of these technologies in the energy system at large.
Brian Hunter: Okay. Thanks, Cory. I probably have time for maybe one more question here. So this one is a very kind of – as we scale up electrolyzers to much larger sizes, how is the hydrogen storage going to be cost effective, whether it's – can you discuss options such as injection into pipelines, salt cavern storage? What type of – do you envision a continental hydrogen pipeline as a primary vector for storage and distribution of the hydrogen?
Cory Kreutzer: Yeah, and so that question is an active area of research that I think continues to need more attention or is getting a fair amount of attention already, but continues to need to be explored in further detail. So that's why – one reason why the topic of hydrogen injection into natural gas is such an attractive one, is that it provides such a large, continuous reservoir across the country.
Other solutions, like salt caverns, are regionally available. And so I think they could be leveraged – they probably will be leveraged, but they are not a universal solution. Then you walk into the discussion regarding gaseous storage versus liquid storage at various scales, and when that makes sense. There's a lot to be considered here, and there is no – that I know of, there is no clean answer right now. It's just basically continued exploration of options and optimizing technologies such that we move in the proper direction to have adequate solutions in place.
Brian Hunter: Great. Thanks, Cory. So Eric, I think we're about out of time. Do you want to conclude the session?
Eric Parker: Yeah. Thanks for handling the Q&A, Brian, and I know we could go a lot longer. There were so many good questions. But we are at the end of our hour. So I'll go ahead and wrap it up today. So thank you again to Kaz and Cory for their contributions today for the H2IQ Hour. I hope everyone learned a lot.
So I'd like to thank everyone for joining today, and I'll remind everyone again that the webinar recording and slides are going to be available on the HFTO website in the year future, and to be on the lookout for more topics like these. And with that, I wish everyone a happy and healthy Thanksgiving, and see you next time. Bye bye.
Kazunori Nagasawa: Thank you, everyone.
[End of Audio]