Fuel cells and hydrogen, a wheel for renewable energy sources development

Whole Mediterranean area has a great potential of renewable energy production both for home and export use. This energy has to be transported and distributed to users, sometime on very long distances. Electric energy generated by PV, wind and concentrated solar is simple to be managed where the electric grid already exist and this could appears as the natural choice for Renewable Energy Sources (RES) deployment. But this approach has some limitation especially for transportation application and for energy supply in location far from the existing grid. Hydrogen storage linked with fuel cells application will allow to overcome these limitation, so that fuel cells and hydrogen could be seen as an additional wheel to the development of RES technologies application. For the future we foresee the large utilisation of the hydrogen coupled with electric grid not in competition but in symbiosis, also if residual competition could exist in some market areas. Our research activities and scientific collaboration are addressed by this vision since more than twenty years. In our presentation we expose recent activities in hydrogen and fuel cell systems development and the main project we run according to our vision, including ETRERA project carried out in collaboration with Tunisian CRTEn research centre.