Abstract

Fossil fuels have presently been the major energy sources, however, they are nonrenewable, limited in supply and cause a global warming effect. Searching for clean, sustainable energy sources and technologies has been received considerable attention. A photovoltaic-hydrogen system is among the interesting processes to produce clean hydrogen energy from a water electrolyser (WE) using electrical energy from a photovoltaic (PV) cell. Because the high variability of the PV performance, the direct use of PV output power for the WE is difficult. In this study, a direct coupling of PV and WE is proposed to find the optimum number of WE cells for the PV and WE system. Performance of the PV and WE system is investigated via a simulation study. The optimum operating point of the PV in term of the power output is presented. The maximum power point tracking (MPPT) efficiency is employed to find a suitable number of the WE cells for hydrogen production.

Keywords: Photovoltaic (PV), Water electrolyser (WE), Hydrogen production, Direct coupling