Green touch for hydrogen production via alkaline electrolysis: The semi-flexible PV panels mounted wind turbine design, production and performance analysis

The novel solar-wind integrated system has been firstly used for hydrogen production in literature with validating theoretical, simulated and experimental studies. This integrated system consists of two main parts; solar-assisted wind turbine and alkaline electrolysis cell. In the first part of this system, the semi-flexible PV panels are smoothly integrated on the vertical axis wind turbine blade. This is a unique design in literature, unlike the hybrid systems that include wind turbines and solar PV panels in published literature. The production and testing of the hybrid integrated system in a single structure were performed both in laboratory conditions and also the system was set up the roof of ATU (Adana Alparslan Turkes Science and Technology University) in Adana. The second part includes hydrogen production via alkaline electrolysis system. The cathodes consist of nickel-coated copper (Cu/Ni) and nickel-vanadium binary coated copper (Cu/NiV), that was produced via electrodeposition technique by self-supporting. The performance of electrodes was compared in 1 M KOH solution via I–V behavior, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, and long term cathodic polarization analysis. Results showed that polarization resistance was decreased almost 4 times by NiV when comparing the Ni. The surface inhomogeneity values were 0.91 and 0.81 for Cu/Ni and Cu/NiV respectively. The hydrogen gas evolved at the cathodes was also measured and higher volumes were detected for NiV binary coating. [Display omitted] •The novel solar-wind integrated system was set up.•The semi-flexible PV panels were smoothly integrated on the vertical axis wind turbine blade.•Alkaline electrolysis was achieved for hydrogen production by harvested energy.•Different cathodes were compared with hydrogen evolution performance.