An Advanced Regulatory Control Structure for the Flexible Operation of Alkaline Water Electrolyzers in the Day-Ahead Electricity Market

To facilitate large-scale green hydrogen production, manufacturers are moving toward pressurized and strongly coupled topologies, where multiple electrolyzers share the same processing equipment. This coupling increases the control challenges regarding temperature and safety-critical gas purity constraints. In this paper, we develop two advanced regulatory control elements aimed at these constraints and embed them in a plantwide control structure for such systems. We show in dynamic simulations that our approach achieves nearly the same production efficiency as with an explicit optimization layer while being inherently safer compared to reference control structures. We further show that it can extend the operating limits by up to 50% compared to simpler regulatory control layers, significantly enhancing both flexibility and profitability in the day-ahead electricity market.