H2 CoopStorage at Renouvelle, news about renewable energies

During the development of the H2 CoopStorage consortium, the Renouvelle site interviewed the CLEF cooperative to understand what the challenges are related to the energy transition. Renouvelle published the article in January 2020.

More precisely, the article highlights the challenges identified by the consortium concerning the integration of a reversible fuel cell in an energy community. The objective is to be able to balance the production and consumption of electricity at the level of a district by using a suitable storage solution.

The fuel cell produces hydrogen from electricity when the production of renewable energy is higher than the district’s consumption. This happens for example during the months of May, June, July, when the photovoltaic panels produce particularly a lot. When the neighborhood needs electricity, the reversible fuel cell uses hydrogen to generate electricity. For example, in winter, when photovoltaic panels produce much less.

The reversible fuel cell is a “seasonal” storage because it is particularly suitable for mitigating the seasonal intermittence of renewable energies (for example: overproduction of electricity from photovoltaic panels in summer and underproduction of panels in winter). It will gradually produce hydrogen in summer from electricity and will consume this hydrogen in winter to inject the necessary electricity.