• Clean Technology
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.182-192
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• 2022

This study provides an overview of the production costs of methane and hydrogen via water electrolysis-based hydrogen production followed by a methanation based methane production technology utilizing CO₂ from external sources. The study shows a comparative way for economic optimization of green methane generation using excess free electricity from renewable sources. The study initially developed the overall process on the Aspen Plus simulation tool. Aspen Plus estimated the capital expenditure for most of the equipment except for the methanation reactor and electrolyzer. The capital expenditure, the operating expenditure and the feed cost were used in a discounted cash flow based economic model for the methane production cost estimation. The study compared different reactor configurations as well. The same model was also used for a hydrogen production cost estimation. The optimized economic model estimated a methane production cost of $11.22/mcf when the plant is operating for 4000 hr/year and electricity is available for zero cost. Furthermore, a hydrogen production cost of $2.45/GJ was obtained. A sensitivity analysis was performed for the methane production cost as the electrolyzer cost varies across different electrolyzer types. A sensitivity study was also performed for the changing electricity cost, the number of operation hours per year and the plant capacity. The estimated levelized cost of methane (LCOM) in this study was less than or comparable with the existing studies available in the literature.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.225-234
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• 2006

Characteristics of electricity production from major fermentation products (acetate, propionate and butyrate) were evaluated in a microbial fuel cell (MFC). For each substrate, batch and continuous experiments were performed. The batch test result indicated that coulombic efficiency depended on the resistance connected in MFC circuit. With acetate, coulombic efficiency were 87% at $20{\Omega}$, but decreaced to 45% at$220{\Omega}$. In continuous tests, maximum power densities obtained was 220 Q with acetate. The maximum power densities of butyrate, acetate and propionate were 6.8, 6.1, and $5.2mW/m^2$, respectively. Propionate and butyrate were converted into acetate producing high currents. $H_2$ produced during butyrate and propionate probably used to produce electricity. In conclusion, butyrate conversion into acetate was faster than that of propionate with higher electricity production. If the production of propionate is inhibited during fermentation, anaerobically fermented liguor may be effectively applied for MFC.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.729-751
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• 2005

RPS(Renewable Portfolio Standards) is an institutional device to promote use of renewable energy through market mechanism by making renewable energy to constitute a pre-announced portion of the electricity production. We measure economic impacts of the introduction of RPS to domestic electricity market at the levels of electricity market, individual industrial sectors and the economy as a whole. First, we examine the TREC(Tradable Renewable Energy Credits) market, where the credits in excess of the obligation of the renewable energy production are sold to those who have to meet the obligation through purchased credits. We then measure end-users' additional cost originating from the introduction of RPS and TREC in electricity production, and their impacts on price and supply in the retail electricity market. Next, using input-output analysis, we measure economic impacts of the changes in retail price and supply on individual industrial sectors and the economy as a whole. Among many others, we find small price effect and large GDP effect - sectoral electricity price rises at around 5%, sectoral price level rises by 0.258%, and sectoral GDP declines by 1.940% on average by the year 2011.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2007

Hydrogen and electricity are expected to dominate the world energy system in the long term. The world currently consumes about 50 million metric tons of hydrogen per year, with the bulk of it being consumed by the chemical and refining industries. The demand for hydrogen is expected to increase, especially if the U.S. and other countries shift their energy usage towards a hydrogen economy, with hydrogen consumed as an energy commodity by the transportation, residential and commercial sectors. However, there is strong motivation to not use fossil fuels in the future as a feedstock for hydrogen production, because the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is a byproduct and fossil fuel prices are expected to increase significantly. An advanced reactor technology receiving considerable international interest for both electricity and hydrogen production, is the modular helium reactor (MHR), which is a passively safe concept that has evolved from earlier high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) designs. For hydrogen production, this concept is referred to as the H2-MHR. Two different hydrogen production technologies are being investigated for the H2-MHR; an advanced sulfur-iodine (SI) thermochemical water splitting process and high-temperature electrolysis (HTE). This paper describes pre-conceptual design descriptions and economic evaluations of full-scale, nth-of-a-kind SI-Based and HTE-Based H2-MHR plants. Hydrogen production costs for both types of plants are estimated to be approximately $2 per kilogram.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers A
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• v.51 no.12
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• pp.638-646
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• 2002

This paper presents an efficient algorithm for evaluating the Profit and revenue of generating units in a competitive electricity market based on the probabilistic production costing technique. The accurate evaluation of the profit and revenue of generating units for long-term perspectives is one of the most important issues in a competitive electricity market environment. For efficient calculation of the profit and revenue of generating units under the equivalent load duration curve(ELDC), a new approach to figure out the marginal plants and the corresponding market clearing prices during a time period in a probabilistic manner is developed. The mathematical formulation and illustrative application of the suggested method is presented.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.35-47
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• 2016

Generation of electricity using wind power has received considerable attention worldwide in recent years mainly due to its minimal environmental impact. However, volatility of wind power production causes additional problems to provide reliable electricity to an electrical grid regarding power system operations, power system planning, and wind farm operations. Those problems require appropriate stochastic models for the electricity generation output of wind power. In this study, we review previous literatures for developing the stochastic model for the wind power generation, and propose a systematic procedure for developing a stochastic model. This procedure shows a way to build an ARIMA model of volatile wind power generation using historical data, and we suggest some important considerations. In addition, we apply this procedure into a case study for a wind farm in the Republic of Korea, Shinan wind farm, and shows that our proposed model is helpful for capturing the volatility of wind power generation.

• Korean System Dynamics Review
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.25-40
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• 2001

This paper describes the forecast of power plant construction in a competitive korean electricity market. In Korea, KEPCO (Korea Electric Power Corporation, fully controlled by government) was responsible for from the production of the electricity to the sale of electricity to customer. However, the generation part is separated from KEPCO and six generation companies were established for whole sale competition from April 1st, 2001. The generation companies consist of five fossil power companies and one nuclear power company in Korea at present time. Fossil power companies are scheduled to be sold to private companies including foreign investors. Nuclear power company is owned and controlled by government. The competition in generation market will start from 2003. ISO (Independence System Operator will purchase the electricity from the power exchange market. The market price is determined by the SMP(System Marginal Price) which is decided by the balance between demand and supply of electricity in power exchange market. Under this uncertain circumstance, the energy policy planners such as government are interested to the construction of the power plant in the future. These interests are accelerated due to the recent shortage of electricity supply in California. In the competitive market, investors are no longer interested in the investment for the capital intensive, long lead time generating technologies such as nuclear and coal plants. Large unclear and coal plants were no longer the top choices. Instead, investors in the competitive market are interested in smaller, more efficient, cheaper, cleaner technologies such as CCGT(Combined Cycle Gas Turbine). Electricity is treated as commodity in the competitive market. The investors behavior in the commodity market shows that the new investment decision is made when the market price exceeds the sum of capital cost and variable cost of the new facility and the existing facility utilization depends on the marginal cost of the facility. This investors behavior can be applied to the new investments for the power plant. Under these postulations, there is the potential for power plant construction to appear in waves causing alternating periods of over and under supply of electricity like commodity production or real estate production. A computer model was developed to sturdy the possibility that construction will appear in waves of boom and bust in Korean electricity market. This model was constructed using System Dynamics method pioneered by Forrester(MIT, 1961) and explained in recent text by Sternman (Business Dynamics, MIT, 2000) and the recent work by Andrew Ford(Energy Policy, 1999). This model was designed based on the Energy Policy results(Ford, 1999) with parameters for loads and resources in Korea. This Korea Market Model was developed and tested in a small scale project to demonstrate the usefulness of the System Dynamics approach. Korea electricity market is isolated and not allowed to import electricity from outsides. In this model, the base load such as unclear and large coal power plant are assumed to be user specified investment and only CCGT is selected for new investment by investors in the market. This model may be used to learn if government investment in new unclear plants could compensate for the unstable actions of private developers. This model can be used to test the policy focused on the role of unclear investments over time. This model also can be used to test whether the future power plant construction can meet the government targets for the mix of generating resources and to test whether to maintain stable price in the spot market.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.324-332
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• 2004

According to the rapid depletion of the fossil fuels, the electricity and hydrogen will gradually take charge of the future energy supply. Especially, in order to control the supply and demand of electricity, energy storage medium is necessary and this could be solved by the combination of water electrolysis and fuel cell. Although electricity can be generated from such alternative energies as hydropower, nuclear, solar, and wind-power resources, alternative energy storage medium is also required since regenerative energies, solar and wind-powers, are intermittent energy resources. In this regard, hydrogen production from water electrolysis was recognized as a superb method for electricity storage. In this work, the current development and economic status of alkaline, solid polymer, and high temperature electrolysis were reviewed, and then the practical use of water electrolysis technology were discussed.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.937-944
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• 2022

Electric vehicles (EVs) have been growing to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the transportation sector. The increasing number of EVs requires adequate recharging infrastructure, and at the same time, adopts low- or zero-emission electricity production because the GHG emissions are highly dependent on primary sources of electricity production. Although previous research has studied solar photovoltaic (PV) -integrated EV charging stations, it is challenging to optimize spatial areas between where the charging stations are required and where the renewable energy sources (i.e., solar photovoltaic (PV)) are accessible. Therefore, the primary objective of this research is to support decisions of siting EV charging stations using a spatial data clustering method integrated with Geographic Information System (GIS). This research explores spatial relationships of PV power outputs (i.e., supply) and traffic flow (i.e., demand) and tests a community in the state of Indiana, USA for optimal sitting of EV charging stations. Under the assumption that EV charging stations should be placed where the potential electricity production and traffic flow are high to match supply and demand, this research identified three areas for installing EV charging stations powered by rooftop PV in the study area. The proposed strategies will drive the transition of existing energy infrastructure into decentralized power systems. This research will ultimately contribute to enhancing economic efficiency and environmental sustainability by enabling significant reductions in electricity distribution loss and GHG emissions driven by transportation energy.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.388-390
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• 2000

The production of electricity and the pattern of consumption in competitive electricity market are changing. The price of electric power in spot market will be varied by the economic electricity availability of generation utilities and electricity consumers. DSM(demand-side management) is a method which provides simultaneously economics to utilities and consumers as main participants in electricity market. In this paper, it is argued that the effect of DSM in competitive electricity market for consumers, generation utilities, and transmission utilities.