Digital Twins for Scaling up Hydrogen Electrolysis

Abstract:
In the context of the energy transition and the development of a climate-neutral economy, there is a need to immensely increase hydrogen production. Producing green hydrogen with water electrolysis represents a great potential to improve the integration of renewable energies into the power grid. Scaling up hydrogen production capacity is a significant challenge on several levels. Hydrogen electrolysers need to be mass produced in an automated manner in order to meet the projected hydrogen demand in the medium to the long term. Digital twin technology offers a promising digitalisation solution to meet this challenge by facilitating the manufacturing and operation processes for hydrogen electrolysers. In this paper, we propose a software architecure for digital twins of electrolyzers as a future-proof method of implementing digitalization. The proposed software architecture utilizes data streams from hydrogen electrolyzers to analyze production and plant operations in both the long-term and near real-time, allowing for rapid reactions to unforeseen events. The aim of this approach is to optimize hydrogen production and improve plant operations.