Optimal Design and Operation of Electrolytic Hydrogen Production and Storage System for Solar Photovoltaic Power Smoothing
Authors: Wang Yifan , Brooker Paul , Fenton James M. 
Published: August 2024

Even though the increasing penetration of solar photovoltaic (PV) energy into the electric grid can reduce the carbon emission of power generation, the intermittency and variability of renewable solar energy lead to frequent and steep ramping operations of conventional fossil fuel power plants. Hydrogen production via water electrolysis using solar power can serve as a controllable load and provide a short/long duration energy storage to mitigate the grid fluctuations (i.e., PV smoothing) and improve the resiliency of power grid. The generated green hydrogen will be further stored under high pressure for subsequent utilizations (e.g., hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle refueling).

Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolyzer with high efficiency and quick dynamic response is used to generate hydrogen [1,2]. The capacity factors of PV field and PEM electrolyzer can affect the performance of PV smoothing on the cloudy day. Even though PEM electrolyzers directly producing high pressure hydrogen are more energy efficient than ambient pressure electrolyzers followed by mechanical compression, higher pressure leads to more undesired hydrogen back diffusion to the oxygen side, which causes lower hydrogen production efficiency, cell degradation, and safety risk of hydrogen explosion limit [3,4]. Optimal design and operation of electrolyzer under fluctuating solar power are formulated based on an integrated hydrogen-based energy storage system (renewable solar coupled with green hydrogen production and storage). Different PV smoothing scenarios as well as optimal size and operation conditions of the PEM electrolyzer are investigated.

The high-fidelity dynamic model of a PEM electrolyzer cell/stack is established with consideration of two-dimensional (“through-plane” and “in-plane”) mass/heat transfer coupled with electrochemical kinetics. The electrochemical reactions are considered using Butler-Volmer kinetics with varying surface molar concentrations of components. Maxwell-Stefan diffusion equation is adopted to calculate the gas-phase species molar concentration in the backing and catalyst layers. Hydrogen permeation back through membrane is included with consideration of both diffusion and convective transports as a function of operational pressure.

To evaluate the transient response of the PEM electrolyzer stack, real-time PV data based on an Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC) solar farm is smoothed using the developed power signal control algorithm. The optimal PV smoothing control algorithm and the electrochemical dynamic stack model show the effectiveness of hydrogen-based energy storage system in smoothing the PV signal to improve the grid stability and flexibility.

[1] Kumar, S.S. and Himabindu, V., 2019. Hydrogen production by PEM water electrolysis–A review. Materials Science for Energy Technologies, 2(3), pp.442-454.

[2] Götz, M., Lefebvre, J., Mörs, F., Koch, A.M., Graf, F., Bajohr, S., Reimert, R. and Kolb, T., 2016. Renewable Power-to-Gas: A technological and economic review. Renewable energy, 85, pp.1371-1390.

[3] Trinke, P., Bensmann, B., Reichstein, S., Hanke-Rauschenbach, R. and Sundmacher, K., 2016. Hydrogen permeation in PEM electrolyzer cells operated at asymmetric pressure conditions. Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 163(11), p.F3164.

[4] Scheepers, F., Stähler, M., Stähler, A., Rauls, E., Müller, M., Carmo, M. and Lehnert, W., 2020. Improving the efficiency of PEM electrolyzers through membrane-specific pressure optimization. Energies, 13(3), p.612.