Electrolyzer Degradation influence on power electronics performance for 6-pulse thyristor rectifier in a large-scale water electrolyzer

Abstract

Water electrolyzers require a high DC power input that can sustain the economic hydrogen production rate. During the conversion from AC to DC, power quality may be affected due to the nonlinearity of each component. In this work, we predict the influence of electrolyzer degradation on power electronics output over a long period of operation. Counterintuitively, rather than decreasing power quality, results show that the power quality increased with the electrolyzer degradation in a 6-pulse thyristorbased solution. Simulation results were partially validated with experimental data from an industrial 20 MW scale PEM electrolyzer.