Research on scenario construction and economic analysis for electric-hydrogen coupling

Abstract

Driven by the “dual carbon” goal and the construction of a New Power System, hydrogen energy as an electric energy storage medium will play an important role and be applied to each link of the power system in the future, showing the development trend as electric-hydrogen coupling. This paper researches 8 typical application scenarios of hydrogen energy throughout the source, grid, and load of a New Power System, describes their composition and characteristics, and calculates economic indicators using the life cycle method, such as the levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH). At present, the LCOH is high, and the conditions for large-scale promotion have not been met in the short term. The LCOH shows a linear downward trend with the decrease of renewable energy levelized cost or electrolytic cell cost. The LCOH shows a first rapid and then slow downward trend as the efficiency and utilization hours of hydrogen production equipment increase. Generally, when the equipment efficiency exceeds 90% or the utilization hours exceed 19 hours, the improvement of relevant parameters has little impact on the LCOH. With the further improvement of key parameters, hydrogen production-based electricity will have a certain cost competitiveness in the future.