Optimized solar photovoltaic-powered green hydrogen: Current status, recent advancements, and barriers

Hydrogen has been gaining tremendous attention as a promising energy carrier that has the potential to replace other conventional fuels, which correspondingly leads to a magnificent reduction in greenhouse emissions and tackles other environmentally related aspects. Despite the number of practical technologies being implemented for producing hydrogen, research has been specifically concentrating on developing renewable energy-driven approaches for green hydrogen generation, such as solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal routes. This study summaries the recent advancements in photovoltaic-based hydrogen production systems. Electrolysis driven by various photovoltaic (PV) technologies, and its subsystems' barriers were also displayed. Moreover, those systems' overall hydrogen generation effectiveness has been reported by evaluating their STH "solar-to-hydrogen" conversion efficiency. Furthermore, it was found that the major barriers related to the technologies under investigation are related to safety, production, storage, exploitation, commercialization, weather conditions' variations, and PV cell cooling.