Levelized Cost of Hydrogen Calculation from Off‐Grid Photovoltaic Plants Using Different Methods
Jonathan Lehmann, Andreas Wabbes, Enrique Miguelañez Gonzalez, Stijn Scheerlinck
Abstract
In 2018, the production of hydrogen from fossil fuel feedstocks for industrial use emitted around 830 million tons of carbon dioxide. The development of green hydrogen production from renewable energy is a promising solution to decrease the carbon footprint caused by hydrogen production. Herein, the impact of the variability of the power output simulated from a single‐point irradiance measurement on levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) calculations is studied. The analysis is carried out using 7 month of 1 min power and plane‐of‐array irradiance historical data from a 36 MWp photovoltaic (PV) plant located in Brazil. LCOHs calculated using historical power production will be compared with LCOHs calculated using power production simulated by two different methods. The difference between the two methods lies in the extent to which the variability of the power output of the PV plant is considered. The focus is set on off‐grid electrolyzers directly powered by PV solar plants.