Simulation Study on the Seasonal Variation of Solar PV based Green Hydrogen Generation in Tropical Climatic Region in India

Abstract

Hydrogen energy is very promising nowadays due to no or very low carbon emission during energy conversion. Hydrogen as a fuel mainly caters in engines and fuel cells used in the automobile sector. Though there are issues regarding transportation and storage of H₂ but research and development is going on to improve such issues. Commercial vehicles are already in the streets worldwide powered by H₂. India is also not far behind. To develop the hydrogen economy throughout the country, India has launched the National Hydrogen Mission which focuses on generation of blue and green hydrogen. There are several ways to generate H₂ out of which electrolysis is one of the simple and clean technologies. H₂ generation through electrolysis is very much dependent on the ambient parameters. Tropical climatic regions have several weather seasons throughout the year which have direct impact on the H₂ generation through electrolysis. In this study, a simulation has been carried out for green H₂ generation with a PV powered electrolyzer with the help of MATL-AB Simulink simscape module by taking all the ambient parameters of a tropical region in India and the effect of seasonal variation on H₂ generation has been evaluated. It has been observed that due to changes in ambient conditions monthly electrolyzer efficiency varies from 59.11% for the month of July to 66.06% for the month of March on and overall system efficiency on monthly basis with PV Module-DC/DC Converter-Electrolyzer varies from 9.8 to 10.4%.