Towards 100% renewable energy systems: The role of hydrogen and batteries

New challenges arise for the accurate modelling of energy systems with a high share of renewable energy. In this context, energy storage technologies become key elements to manage fluctuations in renewable energy sources and electricity demand. The aim of this work is to investigate the role of batteries and hydrogen storage in achieving a 100% renewable energy system. First, the impact of time series clustering on the multi-year planning of energy systems that rely heavily on energy storage is assessed. The results show good accuracy, even for a small number of representative days, which is necessary to limit the computational burden of the optimisation problem. Then, different configurations of carbon-free energy systems are considered by varying the energy storage solution: only-battery, only‑hydrogen, and hybrid scenarios. An island energy system based on photovoltaics and floating offshore wind turbines is used as a demonstrative case study. It is shown that the cost of the only-battery configuration is 155% higher than the cost of the hydrogen-based scenarios. The reason is that the long-term hydrogen-based storage, despite its low round-trip efficiency, avoids costly oversizing of batteries and wind turbines throughout the analysed period. In the selected case study, hydrogen storage reduces the total rated power of the wind farm by about 5 times compared to the only-battery system. Hydrogen-based solutions are therefore crucial in 100% renewable energy systems to achieve energy self-sufficiency in a cost-effective way.