Candidate Interleaved DC-DC Buck Converters for Electrolyzers: State-of-the-Art and Perspectives

Over the last decade, hydrogen production through water electrolysis has benefited from a growing interest from industrials and from the international scientific community. In order to minimize the environmental impact in the hydrogen production pathways, renewable energy sources (wind, solar, hydraulic) are attractive solutions. Like fuel cells, electrolysers need a DC/DC converter since the required DC voltage is quite low. Therefore, DC-DC buck converters are generally used. On the one hand, these converters present several drawbacks for electrolyser applications, especially from conversion ratio and output current ripple point of view. On the other hand, interleaved buck topologies offer more perspective from availability and output current ripple reduction point of view. Hence, the main purpose of this paper is to present and compare different candidate interleaved buck DC-DC topologies featuring a high voltage gain, needed for electrolysers.