A PEM micro fuel cell system is described which is based on self-breathing
PEM micro fuel cells in the power range between 1 mW and 1W. Hydrogen is
supplied with on-demand hydrogen production with help of a galvanic cell, that
produces hydrogen when Zn reacts with water. The system can be used as a
battery replacement for low power applications and has the potential to improve
the run time of autonomous systems. The efficiency has been investigated as
function of fuel cell construction and tested for several load profiles.

The wind is an increasingly significant source of energy with the rising price of non-renewable fuels. The purpose of this project is to determine the specific intensity and frequency of wind speed required to sustain a large-scale wind farm with power output on the order of hundreds of megawatts. To this end, a non-deterministic methodology will be developed to analyze the viability of wind energy systems. A deterministic analysis method considers the majority of design parameters to be known or fixed and may only perform trade studies on a few parameters at a time to optimize performance. In the case of the energy market though, this is not an advantageous strategy since several factors related to economic viability such as energy prices, interest rates, government incentives, acquisition costs and maintenance are highly variable and cannot be assumed to be known. A non-deterministic, statistical approach to wind turbine design has the advantage of predicting with corresponding levels of certainty the power output and economic viability of an energy system. The primary goal of this project is to define the envelope of operating conditions for a large-scale wind project while considering variables of both engineering and economic significance. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewables (HOMER) will be incorporated into the previous analysis using YawDyn and PROPID to determine the economic returns on investment in hypothetical financing cases. Cost factors will now be assigned a mean value along with a probability distribution. Monte Carlo simulations will be run for a large number of variations in the assumed economic and engineering variables to develop an accurate estimate of the price per kilowatt-hour of energy produced from the simulated wind project for a variety of site conditions with the goal of finding the most suitable environment for sustainable wind development.

he new analysis may point to a practical hydrogen storage material for automobile fuel cells and similar applications.

not only can store significant quantifies of hydrogen but also can release it at lower temperatures than the lithium amide alone (about 100 degrees Celsius) while generating much less ammonia.

According to a new report, "Renewables Portfolio Standards in the United States: A Status Report with Data through 2007," released by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a growing number of states are supporting renewable electricity through the creation of renewable portfolio standards (RPS). The report provides a comprehensive overview of early experience with these state-level RPS policies.

This paper proposes a simple method of determining the distance to voltage collapse using some local information such as bus voltage magnitude and load current magnitude. First the voltage and current information are carefully processed to establish a voltage stability index (VSI) that varies almost linearly with load. The VSI is then used to estimate the distance to voltage collapse using linear extrapolation. The effects of generator reactive power limits, line tripping, non-uniform increase in load and additional shunt reactive power sources on the VSI are also investigated. The effectiveness of the proposed method of determining the distance to voltage collapse is then tested on the IEEE 30-bus system. The results obtained by the proposed method are also compared with the corresponding actual values found through repetitive power flow simulations and are observed to be in very good agreement.