A Study of Fuel Cell Scheduling Effect on Local Energy Markets with Heterogeneous Renewable Sources

The study presented in this paper aims to show the impact of introducing a priority-based internal power flow management system on the local energy market of prosumers with solar panels, fuels cells and batteries. The community used for the study is based on the Open Energy Systems (OES), in which 19 autonomous subsystems, equipped with batteries, solar panels and AC grid connection are interconnected via a DC power bus. For the simulation purposes, fuel cell, modeled after Ene-Farm, is added to the original configuration. Each standalone system has internal, priority-based, agent, capable of scheduling the operating hours of the fuels cell to maximize the utilization of the generation and minimize curtailment. The energy market is based on a simplified version of the Zaraba, a continuous double auction algorithm used by the Japanese Stock Exchange, in which prosumer can submit a bid for a future timeslot. The preliminary numerical evaluation is based on the results from several simulations using different versions of the internal management system.