UTSIRA Island Wind-hydrogen System

Norsk Hydro in co-operation with Enercon developed a combined wind and hydrogen energy system as a pilot demonstration project on the island of Utsira, whose municipality has an ambition to be self-supplied with renewable energy (Eide et al., 2004). 

The components making the autonomous system were integrated electrically at 400 V (TN-S) 50 Hz. A separate 315-kVA, 22/0.4-kV transformer connected a 1.5 km cable, transmitting power from the autonomous system to the customer substation. All the 10 households were connected to the customer substation at 230V, which is the standard voltage level in Norway. The customer substation also 

The 600-kW wind turbine connected to the autonomous system had a separate 300-kW one-directional inverter chawing electricity from the DC circuit and fed into the autonomous system. Surplus power was fed into the grid in parallel with the second turbine. The power fed into the autonomous system varies in proportion to the total power produced from the wind. In practice, the autonomous system has a virtual 300-kW turbine connected to it. 

The project concluded on the importance of placing emphasis on integration issues right from the project s start. More specifically, the main conclusions were  

It should be noted that some problems were encountered when trying to feed the local electricity network through the installed fuel cell, i.e. for the fuel cell to operate in grid-parallel mode. 

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