Experimental Study on Fuel Cells and Energy Networks in Residential Areas

Abstract

The demonstration project on fuel cells and energy networks of electricity, heat, and hydrogen in an existing apartment building has been initiated to evaluate authors’ proposal. The authors proposed the setting up of an energy system by fuel cells and energy networks of electricity, hot water, and hydrogen in residential areas. The apartments building has hydrogen production facilities on the roof and hydrogen is available as basic infrastructure. Six apartment houses are involved and three PEM fuel cells (700 W) with hot water storage tanks have been installed, and the electricity and hot water from the fuel cells are shared via an internal electricity grid and a hot water network. The operation results including the performance of each system component such as fuel cell are reported.