Techno-economic assessment of renewable hydrogen production and the influence of grid participation

Abstract

Large-scale hydrogen production facilities will be required to supply the chemical energy demand of certain industries in the future. The case for such production plants based on individual adapted PV and wind farms has been addressed in several studies. However, most studies focus on an island solution of the evaluated plant and therefore, do not allow grid assistance which significantly reduce the installed capacity of the corresponding units. To address this issue, we developed a tool with a linear programming approach to evaluate any location around the world for its renewable hydrogen production costs and the influence on the plant layout depending on its interaction with the grid. A detailed techno-economic evaluation has been performed for five locations where hydrogen production costs in the range of 4–6 €2020/kg have been retrieved. Furthermore, it is shown that with perspective cost data the costs can further be reduced to 2.50 €2020/kg.