Prototype Validation for Mobile Green Hydrogen Refueling Station Using Hardware-in-the-Loop

This work presents the implementation and validation of a residential system prototype to produce green hydrogen in situ using the Hardware-in-the-Loop technique. To pursue this goal, a modular laboratory platform was developed to validate energy management strategies integrating renewable energy sources and hybrid storage systems, including supercapacitors, lithium-ion, and hydrogen batteries. In this way, it is possible to integrate physical devices such as batteries, supercapacitors, electrolyzers, fuel cells, among others, or emulate some of them in real-time to ensure the integration’s flexibility, scalability, and security. Therefore, by combining the laboratory infrastructure based on programmable electronic load and sources, plus the HIL techniques, a mobile hydrogen refueling station of green hydrogen for assisted bicycles was implemented and validated, considering photovoltaic energy production profiles and emulating the charge-discharge behavior of batteries to ensure the energy demand of the electrolyzer to produce and store hydrogen.