The role of fuel cells in port microgrids to support sustainable goods movement

Facilities such as ports that are associated with goods movement face challenges in managing energy requirements including growing demands, maintaining economic competitiveness, increasing efficiencies of operation, and improving the resiliency, reliability, and security of the energy supply. Furthermore, ports face pressure to meet environmental goals including reducing the emissions of both pollutants and greenhouse gases and increasing the levels of renewable sources. Within this framework, many port operators are pursuing the development of microgrids supported by self-generation including fuel cell systems. Given the breadth of energy requirements of ports, the range of fuel cell applications is an attractive resource for stationary power generation, motive power and fuel generation, and backup/auxiliary power in concert with base load power. This work involves a review of the literature, from a technical perspective, to assess microgrids and fuel cell systems at ports including comparison with combustion-based power distributed generation sources. Additionally, novel simulations are presented to provide insight into economic and emission considerations associated with fuel cell deployment in critical facilities. Important distinctions of fuel cells for ports include flexibility of size and fuel, low to negligible emissions, capability to operate in grid-forming mode, and high electric-only efficiencies. While combined cooling, heating, and power improves performance and should be pursued, the mismatch in port electrical and thermal loads is a potential barrier and increases the importance of high electric-only efficiencies of fuel cells. Tri-generation systems have the potential to maximize benefits with the production of hydrogen along with electricity and, if needed, heat.