Fuzzy logic control for solar powered hydrogen production, storage and utilisation system

Abstract

Climate change concerns, increasing global energy demand, coupled with limited supply of fossil fuels, calls for development of new power source. Solar energy is a very promising renewable energy source to moderate the growth of energy demand. The combination of electrolyser and fuel cell which use hydrogen as an energy carrier extends the utilisation of the solar energy. For this integrated solar powered hydrogen production, storage and utilisation system, one of the problems is to develop an efficient control system to improve the performance of the overall system. This paper presents a power management strategy based on fuzzy logic technology to address such problem. The target of this power management strategy is to meet the power demand, to maximise the hydrogen production and to minimise the usage of battery. Therefore, the overall system's efficiency will be increased and lifetime of the battery pack will be extended. The numerical results based on real solar data for a one year period shown that the proposed fuzzy logic controller behaved as expected, it was able to meet the power demand and to store the hydrogen when possible while maintain the battery's state of charge at desired level.