Medium-Voltage Solid-State Transformer Design for Large-Scale H₂ Electrolyzers

Abstract

In the production of green hydrogen, electrolyzers draw power from renewable energy sources. In this paper, the design of Solid State Transformer (SST) for large-scale H2 electrolyzers is benchmarked. The three most promising topologies are chosen for design and comparison, including Modular Multi-level Converter (MMC) based SST, Modular Multi-level Resonant (MMR) based SST, and Input-Series-Output-Parallel (ISOP) based SST. The distance between converter towers for insulation and maintenance, the insulation system of the transformer, and the cooling system are designed with practical considerations in order to have an accurate estimation of the volume and weight of the SST. Losses in the switches are calculated based on equations, and losses in passive components are calculated based on FEM simulation. The operating frequency for each topology is optimized to minimize loss, weight, and volume. The best of each topology is then compared with each other to identify the most suitable one for large-scale H2 electrolyzers.

Keywords

• Hydrogen electrolyzer
• input-series-output-parallel (ISOP)
• modular multi-level converter (MMC)
• solid-state transformer