Modeling and Control of Electrolysis Based Hydrogen Production System

Hydrogen fuel is essential for mitigating climate change and solving energy sector challenges. There are challenges associated with producing hydrogen through electrolysis as a result of the lack of an electrolyzer model and the high costs of hydrogen production. Therefore, this thesis intends to (1) model the electrolyzer accurately and (2) develop an energy management system (EMS) to minimize the cost of hydrogen (CoH) production.

Most literature on electrolyzers assumes a linear model and ignores nonlinear behavior. This may lead to inefficient hydrogen production. Therefore, the first part of this thesis studies the modeling problem of electrolyzer in terms of the parameter estimation.

Moreover, most existing EMSs ignore electrolyzer efficiency variations. Therefore, in the second part of this thesis, an EMS is developed for minimizing CoH production by accounting for efficiency variation. Historical electricity prices have also been incorporated into EMS for seasonal storage of hydrogen.