Economic assessment of a renewable energy-electricity-hydrogen system considering environmental benefits

Abstract

Improving the penetration of renewable energy in the power system is a development trend. However, renewable energy cannot be fully utilized due to its uncertainty, and the further research of renewable energy application integrated with hydrogen storage is necessary. This paper proposes a renewable energy-electricity-hydrogen system that aims to make the most use of renewable energy and achieve carbon emission reduction. From the perspective of the whole life cycle, the economic benefits and environmental benefits evaluation model of this system is built considering environmental benefits quantification. A wind farm project in China is analyzed to study the feasibility of proposed system. The results show that the optimal power of the hydrogen production system when considering the economic and environmental benefits comprehensively (19.8 MW) is larger than that when only considering the economic benefits (17.5 MW). The benefits of wind farm are increased in both cases, but with the emphasis on environmental benefits, the wind curtailment rate of the wind farm is lower (1.12 %) and the carbon emission reduction is over 27,500 tons a year. The total benefits considering the environmental benefits quantification reach to 66.95 million US$. Moreover, sensitivity analysis shows that carbon trading price and hydrogen selling price are the key factors to the benefits of the project. This study not only verifies that hydrogen production by renewable energy curtailment is economically feasible and has significant environmental benefits, but also could provide a guiding for relevant decision-makers.