Techno-economic Analysis of a Stand-alone Hybrid Wind/Fuel Cell Microgrid System: A Case Study in Kouhin Region in Qazvin

The decrease of fossil energy resources and the increasing amount greenhouse gas necessitate the needs of clean sources of energy. One renewable energy source is wind power which has been developing in recent years. Unfortunately, it can happen that no wind power is available during peak hours. In this case, a storage system, charged with backup power, is required. In this study, a hybrid system is presented for a wind farm to provide a reliable power supply and offer, in addition, valuable by-products. The presented hybrid system consists of four main components: a wind turbine, an electrolyzer, a hydrogen storage tank and a fuel cell. In this paper, the case study for the system was done in Kouhin area of Qazvin province. The technical and economic optimization of the system suggested that in the best scenario (consisting of 3 wind turbines), the annual energy production of the hybrid system would be 2,268,072 kWh, with 9.41% provided by the fuel cell. The results show that the hybrid system would lead to a 10.8% increase in wind power capacity factor. The calculated energy costs and the net present cost for the optimum hybrid system are 0.7599 cent per kilowatt-hour and 5,235,066 USD.