Distributed Telemetry and Dynamic Allocation across Renewable-Fed Multi-Cell Hydrogen Plants

Abstract

The electricity supply is also variable at renewable power plants and uneven distribution of energy across several cells makes it difficult and often impractical to maintain optimal hydrogen output and energy use efficiency from the renewable energy. Existing allocation methods are mainly based on the distribution of fixed or equal power levels, irrespective of real-time operating conditions of cells. This paper presents a newly proposed Telemetry Based Dynamic Power Allocation (TDPA) method which allocates the renewable power dynamically based on the cell efficiency and temperature simulation data received from the distributed telemetry. The proposed framework was tested in a MATLAB simulation model of a 4-cell hydrogen plant with a renewable power range of 20-80 kW, an operating time of 24 hours and a simulation interval of 1 minute. The proposed approach increased the hydrogen production by 5.3% while maintaining a target of 21.9 kg/day, while raising the share of RE from 88.5% to 93.1% and decreasing the maximum cell temperature from 64.2°C to 61.8°C, and the renewable curtailment from 11.5% to 6.9% was further reduced. As can be seen from these results, the suggested TDPA framework can be considered as an effective and low-cost solution for the operation of a multi-cell hydrogen plant based on renewables.