Energy and Environment

Renewable Energy Systems

Integrated renewable energy systems and hydrogen technology.
Contact

Ulleberg, Øystein

Principal Scientist

 

Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) has more than 10 years of research experience related to modelling, system simulation, design (and controls), building, and testing of integrated hydrogen (H2) storage systems based on renewable energy (RE).

The RE-technology focus have been on photovoltaic (PV) and wind energy conversion systems (WECS), while the focus on H2-technology is on proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells and electrolyzers and metal hydride (MH) hydrogen storages.

IFE has since 1997 built up an experimental laboratory facility for testing of small-scale RE/H2-systems, which currently (August 2007) consists of the following main components:

     

  • Wind Turbine (5 kW)
  • Bi-directional Power Unit (400 VDC, 300 A, 120 kWDC)
  • PEM Electrolyzer (1.75 kW, 0.4 Nm3 H2/hour)
  • Metal Hydride System (1.5 kg H2)
  • PEM Fuel Cell (1.2 kW)

 

The laboratory is also equipped with batteries, and super capacitors will be added in near future. The battery tester can emulate load profiles or power output from wind- and/or PV-systems, and can be used for testing electrolyzers, fuel cells, batteries and super capacitors. A new PV-system that matches the capacity of the wind turbine is also planned being integrated into the laboratory in 2007/2008.

IFE has since 1995 developed modelling tools suitable for design of RE/H2-systems, and has created a hydrogen energy models (HYDROGEMS) library.  These models are compatible for 3 different software programs:  TRNSYS (TRansient SYstem Simulation) for energy system simulations, EES (Engineering Equation Solver) for component specific and thermodynamic calculations, and MATLAB SIMULINK for detailed power simulations.  The models for TRNSYS are open source code, while those for EES and MATLAB are mainly developed for (and used within) specific projects.

IFE’s expertise on distributed RE/H2-systems covers modelling, simulation, testing and characterization of individual components, and design and control of integrated systems.  IFE aims at expanding the organisation, performing experimental and theoretical R&D, and is now seeking new international projects, particularly within EU’s 7th Framework Program (EU 7 FP) on Energy.

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