Modeling of Green Hydrogen and Electricity Coproduction System for Techno-Eco-Environmental Analysis of Sustainable Microgrid

Introduction

Future energy needs can be significantly reduced by using green hydrogen, which is produced from sustainable resources like solar and wind. The economics of green hydrogen are slightly complicated, mainly due to the significant disparity in the fundamental costs and supply of RE sources. Depending on global climate goals, the development of industry-specific initiatives, energy-efficiency measures, direct electrification and the deployment of carbon-capture technology, the annual demand for hydrogen by 2050 might range from 150 to 500 million metric tons (as shown in Figure 1) (PwC, 2023).

Figure 1.

Hydrogen demand projection across the world

India is one among the fastest-growing economies in the world, with a rapidly increasing demand for energy. It has set goals to achieve Net Zero by 2070 and energy independence by 2047 (Ministry of Science & Technology, 2023). Its energy transition is focused on maximizing the usage of RE across all economic sectors in order to meet this goal. A potential substitute for facilitating this shift is green hydrogen. In addition to replacing fossil fuels in industry and providing clean transportation, hydrogen can also be used for decentralized power generation, aviation and maritime transportation. Standards for environmentally friendly hydrogen generation in the nation have been released by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (2023). In the case of electrolysis-based production, the non-biogenic greenhouse gas emissions resulting from water treatment, electrolysis, gas purification, drying, and compression of hydrogen shall not exceed 2 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per kg of hydrogen (kg CO2 eq/kg Hydrogen), averaged over the previous 12 months. In this way, the United Nations SDG7 of ‘affordable and clean energy’ may also be achieved through hydrogen development (Osman et al., 2022).

The microgrid require assembling of distributed energy resources for resiliency in the form of energy security, including generation, storage and loads. It serves energy to different types of consumers including household, business hub and industrial unit. Since, traditional fossil fuel-based energy sources are responsible for environmental pollution and climate change and thus there is a growing need for sustainable and green sources. The net-zero approach in microgrid contains both electricity and hydrogen production by switching from primarily fossil fuel-based energy to RE with zero carbon emissions. In recent times, the RE resources like solar, wind and biomass have gained popularity because of their low environmental impact and cost-effectiveness. Hybrid RE systems, which combine multiple energy resources, have been proposed as a solution to meet the increasing demand for energy in a sustainable and efficient manner. These systems utilize a combination of resources like solar PV, wind turbines and biomass to generate electricity and hydrogen, which can be used for various applications.

In this study, rest of the paper is organized in following sequence: initially, study objective; then, background review. Thereafter, mathematical formulation, site potential evaluation, RE system modeling, results discussion and finally concluded.

Research Background Review

The term green energy refers to energy produced from natural resources that are replenished more quickly than they are used up e.g., the sun and the wind sources. There are multiple ways for RE based coproduction of electricity and green hydrogen. Following are few highlights on recent aligned works: