Techno-Economic Analysis for Co-located Solar and Hydrogen Plants

Power-to-X technologies with flexible electricity consumption has the potential improve the utilization of variable power generation. Both concentrated solar power (CSP) and photovoltaic (PV) plants can be used to produce green hydrogen, utilizing high temperature electrolyzers (HTE) or low temperature electrolyzers (LTE), respectively. There have been limited studies examining the feasibility of co-locating solar and hydrogen plants from a techno-economic standpoint. This paper presents a detailed analysis and optimization to compare the economic feasibility of an integrated CSP and HTE system versus an integrated PV and LTE system. It is assumed that the steam generated by the CSP is solely directed towards HTE, while the electricity produced by the PV system is either supplied to the grid or directed towards the LTE system. The Renewable Energy Integration & Optimization (REopt) and System Advisor Model (SAM) frameworks developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are adopted and modified to perform the analysis. The results of the case study indicate that the integrated CSP and HTE system is more economically feasible compared to the integrated PV and LTE system, mainly due to the lower cost of thermal energy storage.