Control and power balancing of an off-grid wind turbine with co-located electrolyzer

Timmers, Victor and Egea Alvarez, Agusti and Gkountaras, Aris and Xu, Lie (2024) Control and power balancing of an off-grid wind turbine with co-located electrolyzer. IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, 15 (4). pp. 2349-2360. ISSN 1949-3037 (https://doi.org/10.1109/TSTE.2024.3418043)

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Abstract

Co-locating electrolyzers and offshore wind can significantly reduce the cost of green hydrogen. However, without a grid connection, a new control paradigm is required for the electrolyzer to follow the variable power supplied by the wind turbine. Commercial electrolyzers have power ramp rate limitations, which can result in a mismatch between the wind turbine and electrolyzer power, leading to frequent shutdown and potentially unstable operation. This paper is the first to develop a control system for this off-grid operation with three mechanisms to dynamically balance the power, including energy storage, rotor inertia, and enhanced pitch control. The results show that a $6.8M supercapacitor is required with a power rating and capacity of approximately 6.7 MW and 8.5 kWh to enable the system to operate through 99% of the annual wind variation. If the electrolyzer ramp rates can be doubled, the same operating hours can be achieved using only control-based power balancing methods at the cost of a marginal reduction in energy production. If commercial electrolyzer ramp rates can be tripled, the system is able to operate without the need for any power balancing.

ORCID iDs

Timmers, Victor ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3775-6544, Egea Alvarez, Agusti ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1286-6699, Gkountaras, Aris and Xu, Lie ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5633-7866;

Persistent Identifier

https://doi.org/10.17868/strath.00089677
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)