IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/renene/v253y2025ics096014812501314x.html

Availability assessment of an offshore PEM seawater electrolysis: A system-level approach

Author

Listed:
  • Kumar, Sumit
  • Arzaghi, Ehsan
  • Baalisampang, Til
  • Garaniya, Vikram
  • Abbassi, Rouzbeh

Abstract

Green hydrogen is gaining prominence as a sustainable fuel to decarbonize hard-to-electrify industries and complement renewable energy growth. Among clean hydrogen production technologies, seawater-based PEM electrolysis systems hold substantial promise. However, implementing offshore PEM electrolysis systems faces significant challenges in ensuring long-term availability due to technological infancy and harsh environmental conditions. Ensuring safe and reliable operation is therefore critical to advancing global sustainability goals. While existing research has primarily focused on component-level techno-economic feasibility, limited attention has been given to system-level safety and availability analysis, particularly for offshore renewable-powered seawater-based PEM electrolysis systems. This study addresses this gap by conducting a comprehensive availability analysis of containerized plug-and-play PEM systems in offshore environments. A Bayesian Network model is employed, incorporating Fault Tree Analysis and Reliability Block Diagram approaches, for failure and availability analysis at the system level. A maintenance decision support tool using Influence diagram is developed to analyse different maintenance planning strategies impact on system availability improvement. A case study incorporating industrial modular PEM model is utilized to analyse the developed model effectiveness. The study identifies 81 availability states, with the hydrogen generation subsystem being the most critical to system performance. Comparative analysis shows that applying redundancy across all subsystems improves availability by 18.54 % but reduces Expected Utility by 4.94 %. The optimal strategy involves redundancy for seawater purification, cooling, and monitoring subsystems, with preventive maintenance for hydrogen generation, achieving a maximum EU of 5.29 × 106. This framework supports decision-makers in evaluating system availability under uncertain offshore conditions, optimizing maintenance strategies, and ensuring resilience for large-scale H2 production.

Suggested Citation

  • Kumar, Sumit & Arzaghi, Ehsan & Baalisampang, Til & Garaniya, Vikram & Abbassi, Rouzbeh, 2025. "Availability assessment of an offshore PEM seawater electrolysis: A system-level approach," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 253(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:253:y:2025:i:c:s096014812501314x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2025.123652
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014812501314X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.renene.2025.123652?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zhu, Yanxi & Zhang, Yixiang & Bin, Shiyu & Chen, Zeyi & Zhang, Fanhang & Gong, Shihao & Xia, Yan & Duan, Xiongbo, 2024. "Effects of key design and operating parameters on the performance of the PEM water electrolysis for hydrogen production," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 235(C).
    2. Dong, Wenbin & Moan, Torgeir & Gao, Zhen, 2012. "Fatigue reliability analysis of the jacket support structure for offshore wind turbine considering the effect of corrosion and inspection," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 11-27.
    3. Cheung, Howard & Wang, Shengwei, 2019. "Reliability and availability assessment and enhancement of water-cooled multi-chiller cooling systems for data centers," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    4. Peiravi, Abdossaber & Nourelfath, Mustapha & Zanjani, Masoumeh Kazemi, 2022. "Universal redundancy strategy for system reliability optimization," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 225(C).
    5. Saeed Khalaj & Farshad BahooToroody & Leonardo Leoni & Filippo De Carlo & Gianpaolo Di Bona & Antonio Forcina & Salvatore Caddemi, 2022. "Predicting Extreme Dynamic Response of Offshore Jacket Platform Subject to Harsh Environment," Mathematical Problems in Engineering, Hindawi, vol. 2022, pages 1-15, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Deirdre O’Donnell & Jimmy Murphy & Vikram Pakrashi, 2020. "Damage Monitoring of a Catenary Moored Spar Platform for Renewable Energy Devices," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-22, July.
    2. Li, Xiao-Yang & Chen, Wen-Bin & Kang, Rui, 2021. "Performance margin-based reliability analysis for aircraft lock mechanism considering multi-source uncertainties and wear," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    3. Leimeister, Mareike & Kolios, Athanasios, 2018. "A review of reliability-based methods for risk analysis and their application in the offshore wind industry," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 1065-1076.
    4. Kim, Changwook & Seo, Seunghwan & Yoon, Soobin & Kim, Jihoo & Park, Youngjune & Lee, Pilyoung & You, Donghyun, 2026. "Effects of oxygen bubble formation in the porous transport layer on the performance of polymer-electrolyte-membrane water electrolyzer," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 256(PE).
    5. Jin, Xin & Ju, Wenbin & Zhang, Zhaolong & Guo, Lianxin & Yang, Xiangang, 2016. "System safety analysis of large wind turbines," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 1293-1307.
    6. Dong, Y. & Teixeira, A.P. & Guedes Soares, C., 2018. "Time-variant fatigue reliability assessment of welded joints based on the PHI2 and response surface methods," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 120-130.
    7. Zavvar, Esmaeil & Rosa-Santos, Paulo & Taveira-Pinto, Francisco & Ghafoori, Elyas, 2025. "Lifetime extension of offshore support structures of wind turbines: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).
    8. Sun, Qin & Li, Hongxu & Zhong, Yuanfu & Ren, Kezhou & Zhang, Yingchao, 2024. "Deep reinforcement learning-based resilience enhancement strategy of unmanned weapon system-of-systems under inevitable interferences," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 242(C).
    9. Wang, Zhiqiang & Liu, Xiao & Gu, Wu & Cheng, Lei & Wang, Hui & Liu, Jiaqi & Li, Luling & Wang, Jinhua & Zhang, Meng & Wang, Yongzhi & Shen, Yang, 2026. "Power-to-Hydrogen-to-Power as a pathway for wind and solar renewable energy utilization in China: Opportunities and challenges," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 226(PA).
    10. Xiang Jia, 2025. "A review on the redundancy optimization problem in the past two decades with a general framework, development, and future research," Journal of Risk and Reliability, , vol. 239(6), pages 1241-1256, December.
    11. Yeter, B. & Garbatov, Y. & Guedes Soares, C., 2020. "Risk-based maintenance planning of offshore wind turbine farms," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 202(C).
    12. Dong, Y. & Teixeira, A.P. & Guedes Soares, C., 2020. "Application of adaptive surrogate models in time-variant fatigue reliability assessment of welded joints with surface cracks," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).
    13. Wang, Rumin & Liu, Jingping & Duan, Xiongbo, 2025. "Synergistic effects of n-butanol and hydrogen on combustion stability, efficiency, and emissions in a gasoline engine at low load," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 335(C).
    14. Yang, Kun & Zhang, Mingming & Yang, Shanghui & Song, Yuwei & Dong, Xinhui & Deng, Yanfei & Deng, Xiaowei, 2025. "Pareto frontier for multi-objective wind farm layout optimization balancing power production and turbine fatigue life," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 252(C).
    15. Zhong, Yuanfu & Li, Hongxu & Sun, Qin & Huang, Zhiwen & Zhang, Yingchao, 2024. "A kill chain optimization method for improving the resilience of unmanned combat system-of-systems," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    16. Ossai, Chinedu I., 2017. "Optimal renewable energy generation – Approaches for managing ageing assets mechanisms," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 269-280.
    17. Yi, Zhiwei & Huang, Ning & Zhou, Jian, 2026. "Cost-effective reliability allocation for Software-Defined Networks based on an application-oriented approach," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 267(PB).
    18. Han, Fucheng & Wang, Wenhua & Zheng, Xiao-Wei & Han, Xu & Shi, Wei & Li, Xin, 2025. "Investigation of essential parameters for the design of offshore wind turbine based on structural reliability," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 254(PA).
    19. Chen, Yuzhu & Xu, Jinzhao & Wang, Jun & Lund, Peter D., 2022. "Optimization of a weather-based energy system for high cooling and low heating conditions using different types of water-cooled chiller," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 252(C).
    20. Chen, Chao & Duffour, Philippe & Fromme, Paul & Hua, Xugang, 2021. "Numerically efficient fatigue life prediction of offshore wind turbines using aerodynamic decoupling," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 1421-1434.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:renene:v:253:y:2025:i:c:s096014812501314x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/renewable-energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.