Decarbonizing a solar PV and gas turbine microgrid with hydrogen and batteries

[Display omitted] •Geospatial limited PV only meets 20% of load with 58% of production curtailed.•Energy storage complementing PV results in meeting up to another 15% of load.•Levelized cost of electricity from PV with storage ranges from 0.16 to 0.20 $/kWh.•16,500 MTCO2e emissions are reduced by installing maximum PV and storage.•Backup power >1–3 days makes H2 fuel cells the cheapest zero emissions option. Challenges associated with incorporating the technical potential of photovoltaic (PV) power generation into an existing university microgrid system are investigated with the goal of achieving complete decarbonization. Three energy storage integration pathways are established: sending excess solar PV electricity to 1) battery energy storage systems (BESS) for daily energy shifting, 2) an electrolyzer to produce hydrogen for conversion in a gas turbine power plant (P2G-GT), and 3) an electrolyzer to produce hydrogen for conversion in a fuel cell system (P2G-FC). Installing the maximum geospatially limited amount of solar PV results in directly meeting 20% of the electric load. 58% of PV electric production is curtailed unless energy storage is implemented. The P2G-FC and BESS strategies result in similarly high 64% renewable energy supply (RES) despite having different roundtrip efficiencies. BESS are found to be better than hydrogen storage and fuel cell systems for continuous run times of a day or less. Somewhere between one to three days of continuous power, the hydrogen storage plus fuel cell option is better. To fully decarbonize the microgrid, a significant portion of the RES percentage must come from procured biogas, or from an off-campus resource.