UC Irvine

Accelerating toward a future that is sustained by green energy is essential to avoid a climate catastrophe. While solar, onshore wind and batteries have become ubiquitous due to massive public funding and investments which have led to reduced costs and significant improvements in the technologies, achieving an energy system that is truly decarbonized across all sectors and net zero emissions requires a myriad of solutions to address the challenges associated with intermittent renewable energy.

Offshore wind has a tremendous potential to contribute to decarbonization due to its high capacity factors and recent developments in platform foundation technologies. In the last decade, offshore wind has become a flourishing source of energy with many countries investing and deploying this technology. Hydrogen may be used as a transmission and storage medium for offshore wind. Solid oxide electrolysis (SOE) may also play a vital role in hydrogen production and decarbonization due to its advantageous thermodynamic and kinetic operating conditions. While any source of electricity can be used to power SOE systems, green hydrogen made from a renewable power source represents the most substantial and sustainable pathway forward to achieve net zero emissions. The goal of this work is to explore and assess how offshore wind and hydrogen can support a 100% renewable future in California. To achieve this, this work is divided into three main sections:

First, the benefits and challenges of offshore wind are analyzed in California using generation duration curves, correlation analyses, demand-based metrics, and the discrete Fourier transform to assess the feasibility of integrating this energy with the electrical grid.

Second, an SOE system coupled with offshore wind is designed and proposed, with an emphasis on modelling the thermodynamics of such a system. This work assesses the heat transfer, electrochemical efficiencies, and dynamics of an offshore platform. The results of this platform are compared with alternative electrolysis technologies including low temperature and high temperature proton exchange membrane systems.

Finally, this work experimentally assesses the potential impacts of using seawater as the water source for a high temperature SOE cell. Using a variety of electrochemical analysis methods and tools, including polarization curves, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, distribution of relaxation times, and Scanning Electron Microscopy, this study finds strong evidence of salt precipitation on the cell which did not appear to negatively impact the performance of the cell in the duration of the experiment.