Converter Design and Control Strategy for PEM Water Electrolyzer to Increase Hydrogen Generation Using Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation

This paper aims to design a converter for a proton exchange membrane (PEM) water electrolyzer (EL) and improve hydrogen production through the proposed control algorithm. The converter topology was designed in two stages. The first stage was designed as a series resonant converter (SRC) considering renewable energy source (RES) such as a photovoltaic (PV). The second stage was designed as a synchronous interleaved buck converter (SIBC) for the PEM stack operating voltage. A control algorithm was proposed to include the frequency component in the converter output to increase hydrogen output. The proposed PEMEL system was verified through a hardware in the loop simulation (HILS) system.