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An Investigation of Heuristic Control Strategies for Multi-Electrolyzer Wind-Hydrogen Systems Considering Degradation

Conference ·
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With the growing demand for renewable-energy-powered hydrogen generation and the corresponding increase in plant capacity, individually controlling many electrolyzer stacks will be critical for increasing the plant's lifetime and efficiency. This paper introduces a rule-based controller framework targeting electrolyzer degradation to explore the opportunity space in multi-stack hydrogen plant control. A novel control-oriented degradation model is also presented in this work, which quantifies the impact of steady power input, fluctuating power input, and the number of startup/shutdown cycles on electrolyzer degradation. Using a wind power input signal, 13 controller configurations are tested on 5 MW hydrogen plants consisting of 2, 5, 10, and 25 stacks. These configurations are evaluated on their capability to mitigate electrolyzer degradation and efficiently produce hydrogen from the time-varying input power. The results show that multi-stack control for degradation can extend the plant's lifetime by more than a factor of 3 with minimal impact on instantaneous hydrogen production.

Research Organization:
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Transportation Office. Fuel Cell Technologies Office
DOE Contract Number:
AC36-08GO28308
OSTI ID:
2203523
Report Number(s):
NREL/CP-5000-86416; MainId:87189; UUID:7c98f450-30da-483a-84bc-6bfc05130f58; MainAdminID:70902
Resource Relation:
Conference: Presented at the 2023 IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications (CCTA), 16-18 August 2023, Bridgetown, Barbados
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (13)

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Multi-unit Control Strategy of Electrolyzer Considering Start-Stop Times conference July 2022
Varying load distribution impacts on the operation of a hydrogen generator plant journal November 2021
Optimization of power allocation for wind-hydrogen system multi-stack PEM water electrolyzer considering degradation conditions journal February 2023
Electrolyzer Durability at Low Catalyst Loading and with Dynamic Operation journal January 2019
Critical Review—Identifying Critical Gaps for Polymer Electrolyte Water Electrolysis Development journal January 2017
Control strategy of electrolyzer in a wind-hydrogen system considering the constraints of switching times journal September 2019
Impact of Intermittent Operation on Lifetime and Performance of a PEM Water Electrolyzer journal January 2019

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Related Subjects

HYDROGEN
WIND ENERGY
control
degradation
hydrogen
multi-stack
PEM
scheduling