Research Projects

Hydrogen will play a key role in India’s energy security and when produced with renewable sources of energy it can help combat climate change. India is the third largest consumer and producer of electricity. Renewable energy sources (RES) such as solar photovoltaic (PV) are penetrating the grid with rapid integration, thereby causing low-inertia and low grid stability. To counter the intermittency of RES, energy storage is required. Transportation forms another energy demand giant, which needs decarbonization. Battery energy storage systems are presently catering to both these sectors however, global efforts to transition to hydrogen energy storage systems (HESS) are underway. This transition from BESS to HESS is critically urgent for India. Owing to local availability and high energy density coupled with its ability to decarbonize hard to abate sectors, hydrogen can accelerate our national energy security. Research in academia and industry show distributed efforts to develop green hydrogen production and usage systems. What is needed is an integrated approach which can showcase an end-to-end production, control and usage of hydrogen energy using efficient power conversion interface which can open various pathways for HESS adoption. We propose SHAKTI: Smart Hydrogen-based Advanced Controller for Transitioning to Indigenous Green Energy, where in a power electronic interface is developed to not only power an electrolyzer from PV or ac grid but also interface fuel cell output to load using its bidirectionality. Presently, most of the power electronic converters in EV and PV grid integration industry are imported, leading to high failure rates in Indian grid and climate conditions. Through project SHAKTI we propose to develop a HESS made in India and made for India. As a proof of concept we will develop a 3kVA system which in one direction integrates solar PV and AC grid with hydrogen producing electrolyzer, and in other direction as a step up isolated converter interfacing fuel cell to transient-balancing battery and local loads. The hardware of SHAKTI will be highly efficient, light weight and compact using high frequency soft-switched power conversion. SHAKTI will be integrated with an intelligent data-driven decision-making layer which will be based on a smart energy management system (EMS). This smart EMS will schedule sources and loads using machine learning and will diagnose system faults to prevent down-time while optimizing for low operation costs, low carbon footprint, high efficiency and high reliability. Overall, in three years duration we will design, develop and test hardware and firmware of SHAKTI in Indian grid and climate conditions, showcasing an indigenous technology ready for adoption in energy backup, power grid storage, aviation and transportation sectors.