by Fushuan Wen
Global climate change is one of the most serious challenges around the globe. To reduce the emission of greenhouse gases while accommodating the growing demand for energy supply, electric power industries in many countries are making great efforts in transiting to more sustainable and environmental-friendly energy systems. During this transition, sustainable and renewable generation technologies, advanced operation strategies and flexible energy storage and demand response schemes are key factors of enhancing the efficiency as well as reducing the carbon footprints of power industries. The integration of these new technologies has given rise to the concept of the “Smart Grid”, which intelligently and efficiently coordinates available generation, transmission, distribution, and consumption resources.
The fast development of a vast number of technologies, e.g. renewable generation, power electronics, energy storages, communication, and control, has laid the foundation of a smart grid, which has become a very hot topic for both academic and industrial communities in recent years. However, the implementation of smart grid technologies is still not well explored. One of the major challenges facing the development of a smart grid is the management of a high penetration level of fluctuating renewable energy generation. The intermittency of renewable energy generation outputs contradicts the requirement of real-time power production and consumption balance in power industry. Energy storage represents an ideal solution to accommodating the variability of renewable energy generation, but its expensive cost has greatly limited its commercial applications.
The recent development of power-to-gas technology has shown great potential in providing an alternative energy storage solution in smart grid context. Power-to-gas technology converts water and carbon dioxide into methane while consuming electrical energy. In this way, the excessive generation of renewable energy generation can be converted into natural gas and economically stored in existing natural gas infrastructure. In this context, the cost-effective analysis, possible application scenarios, and business patterns of the power-to-gas technology in the smart grid environment are extensively examined in our study. Despite its positive contribution in mitigating the fluctuating output of renewable energy generation, the existing power-to-gas technology still suffers from limited efficiency and significant investment cost. Our research found that by collaborating with gas-fired generating units and participating in the electricity market concerned are likely to be the profitable business models for a power-to-gas facility. From a long-term perspective, the ever-increasing tendency of the natural gas price and the ever decreasing cost of power-to-gas technology indicate a promising future for its role as an alternative energy storage option in a future sustainable smart grid.
Multi- and interdisciplinary research is highly demanded to address the implementation of key technologies and promote the transition to smart grid operation in the coming years. Established in 2013, the Journal of Modern Power Systems and Clean Energy has provided academic researchers and power engineers around the world with an authoritative platform to demonstrate and discuss research work related to the cutting-edge development of innovative methodologies and pioneer engineering practices towards smart grid development. As an open access journal on power engineering, this esteemed journal builds the bridge between academia and industry in related disciplines with smart grid technologies and benefits the entire community by making the most recent research outputs and academic discussions publicly freely accessible.
Fushuan Wen, Professor Dr.
Green Technology Research Thrust Leader
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
Universiti Teknologi Brunei, Brunei Darussalam