Thyristor

Energy consumption

Control (management)

Voltage

Stack (abstract data type)

Engineering

Computer science

Physical chemistry

Rectifier (neural networks)

Stochastic neural network

Renewable energy

Alkaline water electrolysis

Sociology

Artificial intelligence

Chemistry

Programming language

Electrode

Consumption (sociology)

Topology (electrical circuits)

Control theory (sociology)

Artificial neural network

Electrolyte

Recurrent neural network

Electrolysis

Machine learning

Electrical engineering

Social science

IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics

Water electrolysis will be used to produce renewable hydrogen for energy storage and Power-to-X applications in the future renewable-energy-based energy systems. Therefore, the energy efficiency of hydrogen production will probably become a major issue. In this study, the effect of practical supply power converters on the specific energy consumption of megawatt (MW)-scale alkaline electrolyzers is studied and compared with an ideal dc power supply. The current quality and the stack specific energy consumption are studied in the case of traditional thyristor rectifiers and a transistor-based converter. The stack specific energy consumption is analyzed based on the simulated current waveforms and the electrical equivalent circuit of the electrolyzer stack. It is found that the transistor-based converter offers up to 14% lower electrolyzer stack specific energy consumption than the 6-pulse thyristor rectifier and up to 9.2% lower electrolyzer stack specific energy consumption than the 12-pulse thyristor rectifier as the current varies between 5000 and 1000 A. The simulated change in the stack specific energy consumption of the MW-scale alkaline water electrolyzer outweighs the losses occurring in the rectifiers. Further, selection of the ac voltage level may have a more adverse effect on the stack specific energy consumption with the thyristor rectifier topologies compared with the transistor-based topologies.

Effect of Converter Topology on the Specific Energy Consumption of Alkaline Water Electrolyzers