Application of the Learning Factory Morphology to Integrate a Hydrogen Energy System into the E3-factory

Mitigating climate change is one of the greatest challenges on a global scale. The uncertain and intermittent nature of renewable energy sources, such as wind speed and solar radiation, makes it difficult to ensure a constant supply of energy. This problem can be overcome by a renewable hydrogen energy system when coupled with energy conversion and storage devices. Currently, hydrogen technologies are rarely used in industry due to high barriers to entry in terms of cost and expertise. In this context, a hydrogen energy system testbed (H2-testbed) in a Learning Factory (LF) for research, education and testing of hydrogen technologies would be beneficial to support companies and thus show another way to a CO2-neutral factory. The aim of this paper is to develop a supporting concept for the integration of an H2-testbed in the E3-factory environment at Fraunhofer IWU. To achieve this, the learning factory morphology is applied to identify the current status, open gaps, and future development goals and application scenarios. It was found that the current scenario represents a well-defined technical concept for the integration of the H2-testbed. However, the results also show that there is a lack of a didactic strategy regarding the development of competency-oriented learning modules.