Research Progress on Design and Optimization of Hydrogen-Enabled Zero-Carbon Energy Systems

Hydrogen-electricity complementarity is an inevitable pathway for achieving China’s "dual-carbon" goals. However, the integration of hydrogen energy into integrated energy systems significantly increases the complexity of structural design, operational optimization and control for zero-carbon energy systems, due to the coupling of multiple energy sources such as hydrogen, electricity, cooling, heating, and renewables. Guided by the national "dual-carbon" goals. pioneering achievements have been made by the research team led by professor Guan Xiaohong from Xi’an Jiaotong University in three key areas: the structural design of zero-carbon energy systems, optimization methods for zero-carbon operation, and energy-carbon coordinated management and control technologies. First, a novel "supply-storage-demand" collaborative structure for hydrogen-enabled zero-carbon energy systems was designed, and a corresponding planning method was proposed. This method has supported the optimal planning of zero-carbon energy systems for over 100 energy-consuming scenarios, including buildings, industrial parks, and data centers. Second, to address the stochastic characteristics of supply and demand and cross-time-scale differences in energy systems, a series of innovative operational optimization and energy-carbon management methods were developed from the perspectives of computational architecture, uncertainty modeling and dynamic scheduling mechanisms, yielding pioneering results at the international academic frontier. Finally, an integrated platform featuring efficient collaboration and timely interaction, encompassing "intelligent perception, elastic communication, autonomous computing, and collaborative optimization," was developed. Applied in the Yulin zero-carbon distributed energy center, this platform has achieved a reduction of over 36% in the system’s annual operating cost and lowered carbon emissions per ton of standard coal equivalent to 0. 19 tons. thereby advancing the green and intelligent development of energy systems. Future exploration in hydrogen-enabled zero-carbon energy systems is still required in the directions of structural design, operational optimization, and coordinated management and control. Technological breakthroughs and engineering implementation in these areas will be pivotal for the green transformation of the energy industry.