Electrolyzers Enhancing Flexibility in Electric Grids

Abstract

This paper presents a real-time simulation with a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL)-based approach for verifying the performance of electrolyzer systems in providing grid support. Hydrogen refueling stations may use electrolyzer systems to generate hydrogen and are proposed to have the potential of becoming smarter loads that can proactively provide grid services. On the basis of experimental findings, electrolyzer systems with balance of plant are observed to have a high level of controllability and hence can add flexibility to the grid from the demand side. A generic front end controller (FEC) is proposed, which enables an optimal operation of the load on the basis of market and grid conditions. This controller has been simulated and tested in a real-time environment with electrolyzer hardware for a performance assessment. It can optimize the operation of electrolyzer systems on the basis of the information collected by a communication module. Real-time simulation tests are performed to verify the performance of the FEC-driven electrolyzers to provide grid support that enables flexibility, greater economic revenue, and grid support for hydrogen producers under dynamic conditions. The FEC proposed in this paper is tested with electrolyzers, however, it is proposed as a generic control topology that is applicable to any load.

Dynamic Emulation of a PEM Electrolyzer by Time Constant Based Exponential Model

“…Considering the constraints (6) and (11), and assuming that the two capacitances are equal, the following values could be calculated for their equivalent resistances and capacitances:…”

“…The vector of the sampled data contained 2000 samples; to identify the two time constants, the intervals 677-695 and 800-1960 were considered as a trade-off between a suitable number of data to be processed and the exponential curve to be approximated. The values of the time constants obtained were: Considering the constraints (6) and (11), and assuming that the two capacitances are equal, the following values could be calculated for their equivalent resistances and capacitances:…”

“…Indeed, water electrolysis a process that uses electricity to split pure water into hydrogen and oxygen. This chemical reaction is carried out by means of an electrolyzer (EL) [6].…”

Voltage and Power Balance Strategy without Communication for a Modular Solid State Transformer Based on Adaptive Droop Control

“…In addition, there is an inherent safety problem in dealing with such systems. In this way, the use of real-time simulation of converter models and control strategies assists in validating the results without the need for physical assembly of the converters, thus reducing the project development time and the inherent problems of the prototypes' physical assembly [23][24][25]. Therefore, in this work, high level programming with MATLAB/DSP (R2017a, The MathWorks, Inc, Natick, MA, USA) integration and Hardware In the Loop (HIL) simulation is used to implement the Modular Cascaded Solid State Transformer.…”

Optimal Scheduling of Electrolyzer in Power Market with Dynamic Prices

“…With the breakthrough in electrolyzer technology, effectively producing hydrogen using distributed electrolyzer becomes feasible [3]. When electricity energy can steadily power electrolyzer, FCV based transportation systems can significantly reduce impact of human travel to environment.…”