Feasibility-Aware Energy Management of a Hydrogen-Enabled Community Microgrid: A Proof-of-Concept Study

Abstract

Hydrogen-enabled community microgrids require coordinated control of intermittent renewable generation and coupled battery and hydrogen storage. This paper presents a feasibility-aware proximal policy optimization (PPO) energy management system for a grid-connected microgrid comprising photovoltaic and wind generation, battery storage, an electrolyzer, a hydrogen tank, a fuel cell, and diesel backup. Raw continuous actions are projected onto the feasible operating set before evaluating the hourly power balance, ensuring operationally valid dispatch. The proof-of-concept study uses 8,760 hourly observations for a 1,000-household community in Rockhampton, Australia. The same annual chronology and one random seed were used for training and evaluation. Under a 1 percent independent hourly grid outage probability, the system achieved an annual net operating cash balance of AUD 195,690.67, load satisfaction of 99.77 percent, and a gross renewable share of 91.2 percent. After removing duplicated hydrogen electricity emissions, annual emissions were 1.342 kt CO2, equivalent to 0.328 kg CO2 per kWh of served demand and 0.087 kg CO2 per kWh of export-inclusive delivered energy. At a 5 percent outage probability, the cash balance decreased to AUD 169,892.21 and load satisfaction fell to 98.79 percent. Battery discharge and diesel generation increased more than fuel cell output. The results demonstrate feasible dispatch for the studied chronology, but broader validation requires unseen testing, multiple random seeds, benchmark controllers, export limits, and sustained outage scenarios.