抄録
Renewable energy resources are known to have two critical problems—fluctuation and low density. The authors have already demonstrated the worldwide potential of wind energy within a previous study. In this study, we describe the problem of the fluctuation of renewable resources and its solution. The authors applied “system energy technology” to renewable resources as a relatively long-term solution to the fluctuation problem. System energy technology is a concept for producing new value without new development and it was named by one of the authors of this paper, Prof. Masaru Hirata. This concept is adapted to renewable resources such as a combination of solar and wind energies. The output, which is transformed into hydrogen, is estimated for three different cases—1 kW wind turbine, 1 kW solar cell, and a combination of both in order to study the effect of combining the two resources. The computation is carried out for 840 AMeDAS sites in Japan. The authors observed that the effect of combination is particularly strong in the area along the sea of Japan. In these areas, the monthly fluctuation in the power supply could be reduced by the combined system. On the other hand, the daily output of renewable energy varies. In order to solve this problem, the authors propose that the electric output should be changed to hydrogen. This system is called as the Hythane (hydrogen + methane) pipelines. The authors will discuss the Hythane pipeline systems in the following system study.
