A flexible techno-economic analysis tool for regional hydrogen hubs – A case study for Ireland
Cian Moran, Eoghan Moylan, Jack Reardon, Tubagus Aryandi Gunawan, Paul Deane, Sajjad Yousefian, Rory F.D. Monaghan
Abstract
The increasing urgency with which climate change must be addressed has led to an unprecedented level of interest in hydrogen as a clean energy carrier. Much of the analysis of hydrogen until this point has focused predominantly on hydrogen production. This paper aims to address this by developing a flexible techno-economic analysis (TEA) tool that can be used to evaluate the potential of future scenarios where hydrogen is produced, stored, and distributed within a region. The tool takes a full year of hourly data for renewables availability and dispatch down (the sum of curtailment and constraint), wholesale electricity market prices, and hydrogen demand, as well as other user-defined inputs, and sizes electrolyser capacity in order to minimise cost. The model is applied to a number of case studies on the island of Ireland, which includes Ireland and Northern Ireland. For the scenarios analysed, the overall LCOH ranges from €2.75–3.95/kgH2. Higher costs for scenarios without access to geological storage indicate the importance of cost-effective storage to allow flexible hydrogen production to reduce electricity costs whilst consistently meeting a set demand.