Seasonal hydrogen storage for residential on and off grid solar photovoltaics prosumer applications: Revolutionary

solution or niche market for the energy transition until 2050

The researchers and their contribution:

Dominik Keiner: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Resources, Writing – original draft, Writing – review
& editing.
Christian Thoma: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Resources, Writing – review & editing.
Dmitrii Bogdanov: Methodology, Writing – review & editing.
Christian Breyer: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Writing – review & editing, Supervision.

Introduction:
Solar Energy was acknowledged as the new king of power generation last 2020. It is because of its
tremendous potential, in particular of solar photo-voltaics. Consumers that also produce electricity while consuming
it are defined as prosumers.
While H2 might be very well suited as seasonal storage or balancing solution in large-scale, the role of
thermal seasonal storage option especially the hydrogen as an alternative means of fuel or storage option has not
yet been completely studied on a global scale.

Research Gap/Questions
The study wants to investigate the sector-couple residential PV prosumer systems:
if the system will fully operate in full hours for the whole year
if it will be a successful method for 145 regions
if it will be a cost-friendly from 2020-2050

Literature Review:
Studies conducted by Potzinger et.al and den Balvert and smit do not focus on model houses and do not
consider all three sectors of residential, power, heat, and transportation.

Heat demand and supply for battery electric vehicles as transportation are significant since Battery Electric
Vehicles users prefer charging their vehicles in their home. This study aims to overcome the research gaps in
literature and to provide a techno-economic optimization of residential PV pro-sumer systems, including power,
heat, and transport sectors on a global scale for the energy transition time frame until 2050.

Den Balvert and Smit included a cost assumption for 2020 and 2030. According to the result of the
conducted system optimization, it shows that the Hydrogen Storage Systems remain as an expensive storage option.

Conclusion:
A hydrogen seasonal storage system has a water electrolyser, hydrogen compressor, hydrogen energy
storage, and a fuel cell for discharging the hydrogen. Eight different scenarios have been assessed and the
assessment was conducted for 145 regions globally.

For the conclusion, only few regions can afford the hydrogen seasonal storage for a low cost due to a very
high seasonality or high energy demand and only if off-grid connection is allowed. If off-grid connection is allowed,
no region globally could be found with hydrogen as part of a least cost solution until 2050 since maintaining this kind
of system is expensive.

Insights:
As an engineering student and researcher, we might not conduct this study since it is not cost-friendly
research because of the price of some components of the hydrogen seasonal storage like water electrolyser and fuel
cells. Also, if we are going to conduct this study for every house not everyone is financially stable to afford this. And
for the last reason, even though there will be professors or professionals to guide us, we, the students, don't have
the necessary resources to further continue investigate this topic.