Research on typical operating conditions of hydrogen production system with off-grid wind power considering the characteristics of proton exchange membrane electrolysis cell

Hydrogen energy, with its abundant reserves, green and low-carbon characteristic, high energy density, diverse sources, and wide applications, is gradually becoming an important carrier in the global energy transformation and development. In this paper, the off-grid wind power hydrogen production system is considered as the research object, and the operating characteristics of a proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysis cell, including underload, overload, variable load, and start- stop are analyzed. On this basis, the characteristic extraction of wind power output data after noise reduction is carried out, and then the self-organizing mapping neural network algorithm is used for clustering to extract typical wind power output scenarios and perform weight distribution based on the statistical probability. The trend and fluctuation components are superimposed to generate the typical operating conditions of an off-grid PEM electrolytic hydrogen production system. The historical output data of an actual wind farm are used for the case study, and the results confirm the feasibility of the method proposed in this study for obtaining the typical conditions of off-grid wind power hydrogen production. The results provide a basis for studying the dynamic operation characteristics of PEM electrolytic hydrogen production systems, and the performance degradation mechanism of PEM electrolysis cells under fluctuating inputs.