Referenzkraft­werk Lausitz (RefLau)

Lausitz Reference Power Plant (RefLau)

Authors:                      Dipl.-Ing. Sebastian Rochau, Krishnakumar Rana, M.Sc

Duration:                    January 2023 to December 2027

Funding Agency:       Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action

Grant ID:                     03EWR018D

Project Partner:          Lausitz Reference Power Plant GmbH
                                      Schwarze Pumpe Industrial Park Special-Purpose Association
                                      Energy source
                                      Enertrag

Research partner:       Fraunhofer IEG
                                      BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg
                                       Chair of Power Electronics, TU Dresden

Project Objectives

• Construction of a reference power plant in the Schwarze Pumpe Industrial Park, consisting of an electrolyzer, storage tanks, battery storage, supercapacitors, and a fuel cell, in which only renewable energy sources are used
• Demonstrating opportunities for sector coupling in conjunction with the reference power plant
• Demonstrating that the power plant can provide grid services as a substitute for the rotating mass of conventional turbine-based power plants

© Krishnakumar Rana

Project Status

• A detailed simulation model of the complete process chain has been implemented in Dymola. The model captures the full pathway from renewable power input through hydrogen production, purification, multi-stage compression, and high-pressure storage, as well as the reverse path of discharging stored hydrogen through a fuel cell for power generation, as illustrated below.
• The model includes a supervisory dispatch and control layer that manages power flows between the renewable input, the grid/market setpoints, and the battery, governing its charging and discharging alongside the electrolyzer and fuel cell operation. This allows the battery to buffer short-term power fluctuations while the hydrogen path (electrolysis, purification, compression, and storage) handles longer-duration energy storage.
• On the discharge side, hydrogen stored in the high-pressure trailer storage can be drawn back through a throttling stage and converted to electrical power via the fuel cell, closing the power-to-gas-to-power loop.
• This model enables the analysis of power management and energy storage strategies (battery and hydrogen), hydrogen production and purification processes, compression and storage logic, and power reconversion via the fuel cell, along with their interactions across the system. It provides the foundation for evaluating dispatch strategies and control concepts relevant to the project's sector-coupling objectives, and will be extended to support further analysis of grid services and process integration.

Objectives of the subproject led by the Chair of Energy Process Engineering

• Development of a process management tool that analyzes not only hydrogen but also other material and energy flows with regard to their integrability into additional processes or sectors.
• Identification of potential applications for sector coupling.