Green hydrogen production: Analysis for different single or combined large-scale photovoltaic and wind renewable systems

Abstract

Hydrogen is a promising energy carrier to provide sustainable energy use throughout the world. Researchers and policy-makers have focused on investigations in three areas of hydrogen-related technologies in the energy market: (1) alternative fuel production based on hydrogen and carbon dioxide; (2) hydrogen injection to the natural gas pipeline networks; (3) usage of hydrogen in transportation applications. One of the most important challenges facing hydrogen technology development is the production of green hydrogen, which can be achieved through water electrolysis coupled with renewable power generation. Although many studies have been conducted, there is still a need for further development, which requires open-source big data and models and standardization of the processes to compare different renewable-based hydrogen production systems. To fill this research gap, the performance of a grid-connected hybrid wind turbine and solar photovoltaic-based water electrolysis systems for large-scale green hydrogen production were investigated. The objective is to propose an accurate methodology to compare wind and solar systems, or hybrid ones, for green hydrogen production worldwide. A large dataset describing the hybrid wind turbine-photovoltaic hydrogen production in various locations was created by performing dynamic simulations using TRNSYS and analyzed using MATLAB and Excel. Several dimensionless indicators were employed and assessed for standardizing the performance evaluation procedure of renewable-based hydrogen production systems, including the electrolyser load portion satisfied by the wind turbine and photovoltaic, the generated wind turbine and photovoltaic energy portion supplied to the electrolyser load and the quantity of energy exported to and imported from the grid. The annual and monthly values of these indicators together with the total amount of green hydrogen production were estimated for 28 global locations. The procedure applied can be easily used to test small-scale applications like residential users or large-scale applications like industrial users, as well as for any hydrogen demand and climatic conditions.