The Construction of a Wind Turbine System with an EDLC for Hydrogen Production

Abstract

We studied a new wind turbine system that uses an electric double layer capacitor (EDLC) as a method of effectively producing hydrogen from natural energy. Before this system can be installed and its effects considered, an outline design of the system based on the wind conditions in the installation region must be performed, and the system scale and the obtained amount of the electric power must be estimated. In this paper, the method to determine the system configuration that would effectively supply the electric energy to the hydrogen generator was examined using numerical analysis. The configuration obtained from this analysis determined the required capacity of the hydrogen generator for the amount of power generation that was needed, as well as the conditions required in order for the EDLC to effectively buffer any changes. When a system is constructed using this configuration, the electric charging and discharging of the EDLC are balanced, and it is possible to effectively supply electric energy to the hydrogen generator. When a wind turbine generator with a rated power of 500W was operated under the wind conditions on Miyako Island, the appropriate capacity of the hydrogen generator was 144W, and the corresponding EDLC capacity was 11.3Wh.