Hydrogen, RWE and Domotics: energy saving towards zero emissions home
Actual trend in stationary energy sector should be the zero-emissions-home, in which aim is to limit or avoid taking energy from the grid (actually unable to support the next energy scenarios, facing new challenges like Power Quality, Power Premium, High RWE penetration), going towards distributed-energy-scenarios. Needed energy can be produced “in situ”, using innovative technologies with low environmental impact. In this contest a small-house, supplied by different kinds of RWE, was designed. New and already tested technologies are evaluated at different boundary conditions: miniwind (1kW), photovoltaic (1kWp), hydrogen, Fuel Cells (1,2kW) a battery-storage system and finally a thermal solar panel. The aim of the work is to study the integration of FC with random energy sources and in particular with PV technology. The project intends to evaluate the maximum energy-saving analysing different configurations in stand-alone and/or different combinations of installed energy sources, such as the PV or FC stand alone, the PV grid-connected, FC used as UPS or for hydrogen production using URFC, etc. In order to do these evaluations, beside innovative technologies a domotics system was introduced. This method allows to control the energy management, automating the use of electrical appliance, and to improve comfort and home-safety. Two separated electric circuits are designed: Energy-Side-Management, including the energy sources, and Demand-Side-Management that is the load. The interface between ESM and DSM is the domotics system (fig.1). In order to study different scenarios, in the single-wire circuit several switches are placed that allow to cut out some portions of the plant.