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Abstract Global hydropower growth continues to accelerate with 25% of total capacity installed in just the last 10 years. This accelerating expansion and the important storage facility hydropower means it is increasingly important to understand the reasons for operational failures. This is a challenge because the major reason for failures involves the complex interaction of hydraulic, mechanical and electric subsystems. Historically, reliability modelling has been split in two directions, focusing on different sub-systems, and has not yet been unified. Here these approaches are unified with a novel expression of unbalanced forces. This model with operational data are validated and the important modes of oscillation in the shaft are identified. Finally, the mechanism of the first-order oscillation mode exciting a second-order mode is presented. This integrated and accurate mathematical model is a major advance in the diagnosis and prediction of failures in hydropower operation.

In this work, we investigated the impact of temperature on two-phase transport in low temperature (LT)-polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolyzer anode flow channels via in operando neutron imaging and observed a decrease in mass transport overpotential with increasing temperature. We observed an increase in anode oxygen gas content with increasing temperature, which was counter-intu.itive to the trends in mass transport overpotential. We attributed this counterintuitive decrease in mass transport overpotential to the enhanced reactant distribution in the flow channels as a result of the temperature increase, determined via a one-dimensional analytical model. We further determined that gas accumulation and fluid property changes are competing, temperature-dependent contributors to mass transport overpotential; however, liquid water viscosity changes led to the dominate enhancement of reactant water distributions in the anode. We present this temperature-dependent mass transport overpotential as a great opportunity for further increasing the voltage efficiency of PEM electrolyzers.

Abstract With the application of advanced information technology for the integration of electricity and natural gas systems, formulating an excellent energy conversion and management strategy has become an effective method to achieve established goals. Differing from previous works, this paper proposes a peak load shifting model to smooth the net load curve of an integrated electricity and natural gas system by coordinating the operations of the power-to-gas unit and generators. Moreover, the study aims to achieve multi-objective optimization while considering the economy of the system. A dynamic energy conversion and management strategy is proposed, which coordinates both the economic cost target and the peak load shifting target by adjusting an economic coefficient. To illustrate the complex energy conversion process, deep reinforcement learning is used to formulate the dynamic energy conversion and management problem as a discrete Markov decision process, and a deep deterministic policy gradient is adopted to solve the decision-making problem. By using the deep reinforcement learning method, the system operator can adaptively determine the conversion ratio of wind power, power-to-gas and gas turbine operations, and generator output through an online process, where the flexibility of wind power generation, wholesale gas price, and the uncertainties of energy demand are considered. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can increase the profit of the system operator, reduce wind power curtailment, and smooth the net load curves effectively in real time.

Abstract This study proposes a novel interconnector, termed beam and slot interconnector (BSI), for the anode-supported planar solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC). A detailed comparative investigation is conducted on various transport characteristics and electrical performance of the SOFC stacks with conventional straight channel interconnectors (SCIs) or with novel interconnectors. Results show that the peak power density of a SOFC stack with BSIs is 24.8% higher than it with SCIs at 700 °C and a fuel–air flow rate of 16–40 Nml/(min·cm2). Moreover, BSI can reduce the fuel–air feeding and enhance the fuel–air utilization while maintaining high output power density. Compared with SCI, BSI promotes the gas disturbance, significantly increases the gas velocity and vorticity, and leads the gas to flow in the direction perpendicular to the channel. BSI eliminates the limitation of SCIs on gas diffusion in the electrode and transfers sufficient reactant gas into the electrode function layers for electrochemical reactions. BSI shortens the charge transfer path in SOFC and almost avoids the adverse effects of the electrode-interconnector contact resistance. Compared with the conventional SOFC stack, the novel SOFC stack with BSIs significantly reduces various overpotentials. At 700 °C and 0.5 A/cm2, the activation, concentration, and contact overpotentials are reduced by 8.5%, 47.4%, and 96.4% respectively, and the total overpotential finally drops by 20.0%. Overall, the electrical performance of the SOFC stack with novel interconnectors significantly exceeds the one with conventional interconnectors under the same operating conditions.

Abstract The technology landscape around distributed generation continues to evolve in response to increasing demand for high-efficiency, low-emission, low-cost power generation. While emerging distributed power technologies, such as solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), continue to advance, they still face challenges due to their high capital costs, and shorter lifetimes that typically arise from electrochemical stack performance degradation at high operating temperatures (>750 °C). Recent advancements in protonic ceramic fuel cells (PCFCs) offer the potential to mitigate drawbacks of their higher temperature SOFC counterparts by enabling lower operating temperatures (550 °C–600 °C) with acceptable power densities. The present work leverages the recent progress in protonic ceramic cell and stack technology development to generate viable system configurations and evaluate the energetic performance potential of PCFC-based systems for stationary power generation. Process system engineering of two water-neutral system concepts, which provide 25 kW of electric power and process hot water, are presented and evaluated through sensitivity studies. Stack design parameters are altered and used to gauge the effect on system performance characteristics, including fuel cell stack and balance-of-plant sizing requirements, and electric and cogeneration efficiencies. The study finds that the potentially high per-pass fuel utilization capability of PCFC stacks could enable unprecedented electric efficiencies approaching 70% without hybridization with other prime movers.