Hydrogen vs. Battery Energy Storage: A Graph-Theoretic Approach to Network Resilience in Photovoltaic Microgrids

It is essential to increase the resilience of power distribution systems to deal with natural disasters and ensure a continuous supply of critical loads. Microgrids equipped with energy storage systems provide a promising means of enhancing distribution system resilience. This paper proposes the integration of hydrogen energy storage systems (HESSs) with photovoltaic-based microgrids to improve the resilience of distribution systems. Improving resilience is pursued by maximizing the supplied loads and maximising restored load while minimising the number of electrically isolated microgrids. The optimal steady-state feasible configuration of the network is determined by using the graph method, considering the fault location and the network tie-lines. To evaluate the performance of hydrogen storage and compare it with batteries under similar weather conditions and damage levels, an IEEE 33-bus network with three microgrids is used. The results show that HESSs, when supplied by an adequate pre-stored hydrogen inventory, are less sensitive to short-term reductions in PV generation, can improve the resilience of distribution networks more effectively than batteries. In the case of severe damage events, HESSs can supply up to 28% more load than batteries.