Optimal coordinated control of multi-renewable-to-hydrogen production system for hydrogen fueling stations

Abstract

Under the pressure of climate change, the demands for alternative green hydrogen H₂ production methods have been on the rise to conform to the global trend of transition to a H₂ society. This paper proposes a multi-renewable-to-hydrogen production method to enhance the green H₂ production efficiency for renewable-dominated hydrogen fueling stations (HFSs). In this method, the aqueous electrolysis of native biomass can be powered by wind and solar generations based on electrochemical effects, and both of electrolysis current and temperature are taken into account for facilitating on-site H₂ production and reducing the electricity consumption. Moreover, a capsule network (CN)-based H₂ demand forecasting model is formulated to estimate the gas load for HFS by extracting the underlying spatial features and temporal dependencies of traffic flows in the transportation network. Furthermore, a hierarchical coordinated control strategy is developed to suppress high fluctuations in electrolysis current caused by volatility of wind and solar outputs based on model predictive control (MPC) framework. Comparative studies validate the superior performance of the proposed methodology over the power-to-gas (P2G) scheme on electrolysis efficiency and economic benefits.