An-Najah Staff

With new technologies emerging and the existing ones evolving, the basis for having large centralised Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plants is slowly diminishing. Beside the increasing energy demand and the need to reduce CO2 emissions, the use of smaller decentralised CHP plants is becoming more interesting. Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC), thanks to their fuel flexibility (hydrogen, natural gas, propane, etc), are suitable to the above mentioned aims. From a storage point of view, in order to ensure increasing penetration of technologies related to renewable energies in decentralized generation, innovative devices that permit storage of energy must be considered. The most effective solution is the combination of renewable energies and secondary batteries. The paper explores the benefit of a hybrid system which combines the SOFC technology and a high temperature battery in a first step of the development process. A proper strategy is proposed using simulation and experimental results.