Industry 4.0-compliant IoT Supervisory System for Green Hydrogen Applications in Industrial and Domestic Sectors

In recent years, advancements in technologies related to hydrogen have facilitated the exploitation of this energy carrier in conjunction with renewable energies, to meet the energy demands of diverse applications. This paper describes a pilot plant within the framework of a Research and Development (R&D) project aimed at utilizing hydrogen in both industrial and domestic sectors. To this end, this facility is comprised of six subsystems. Initially, a photovoltaic (PV) generator consisting of 48 panels is employed to generate electrical current form solar radiation. This PV array powers a Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolyzer, which is responsible for producing green hydrogen by means of water electrolysis. This produced hydrogen is subsequently stored in a bottling storage system for late use in a PEM fuel cell that reconverts it into electrical energy. Finally, a programable electronic load is utilized to simulate the electrical consumption patterns of various profiles. These physical devices exchange operational data with an open-source supervisory system integrated by a set of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and Internet of Things (IoT)-framed environments. Initially, Node-RED acts as middleware, handling communications, and collecting and processing data from the pilot plant equipment. Subsequently, this information is stored in MariaDB, a structured relational database, enabling efficient querying and data management. Ultimately, Grafana environment serves as a monitoring platform, displaying the stored data by means of graphical dashboards. The system deployed with such I4.0/IoT applications places a strong emphasis on the continuous monitoring of the power inverter that serves as the backbone of the pilot plant, both from an energy flow and communication standpoint. This device ensures the synchronization, conversion and distribution of electrical energy, while simultaneously stands as a primary data source for the supervisory system. The results presented describe the design of the system and provide evidence of its successful implementation.