Proactive Scheduling of Hydrogen Systems for Resilience Enhancement of Distribution Networks

TL;DR

This paper proposes a proactive hydrogen-based energy storage system to enhance the resilience of distribution networks against cyber-physical threats and natural disasters, demonstrating improved outage management in simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hydrogen system-based proactive operation scheme for distribution networks to improve resilience, unlike traditional battery storage methods.

Findings

Hydrogen systems can store energy days before an extreme event.

H2 systems reduce load curtailment during outages.

Resilience is improved during $N-m$ outages exceeding 10 hours.

Abstract

Recent advances in smart grid technologies bring opportunities to better control the modern and complex power grids with renewable integration. The operation of power systems, especially distribution network (DN), is facing with preeminent challenges from cyber-physical-human (CPH) threats and natural disasters. In order to provide better response against threats and improve the resilience of power grid, proactive plans and operational schemes are required by system operators to minimize the damages caused by CPH threats. To that end, this paper proposes a proactive plan for DN operation by using hydrogen (H2) systems to enhance the resilience through cost-effective long-term energy storage. Unlike batteries, H2 energy can be stored in the storage tanks days before the extreme event, and transformed into power by fuel cell units in the post-event time to reduce load curtailment caused by CPH threats. The proposed framework is validated by testing on 33-node test feeder. Simulation results demonstrate that H2 systems can improve the resilience of DN during $N-m$ outages lasting for more than 10 hours.