Techno-economic analysis for off-grid green hydrogen production in Uruguay

Abstract

The present study develops a techno-economic optimization model to determine and size the capacity of the renewable energy generation park, the electrolyzer, the storage system and the way to transport hydrogen which minimizes the levelized cost of hydrogen in Uruguay. To perform the optimization the model uses as input parameters the hydrogen demand, the distance to the point of supply, the renewable resource available and the year of construction of the project. In addition, this study analyzes the impact of the change of hydrogen demand scale (250, 15 & 1.72 tH2/d) and their technological maturity (2022 & 2030) on the cost of hydrogen production and each stage of the chain. The cost of energy, the demand for hydrogen, and any penalties for not supplied hydrogen determine the required storage capacity. It was found that for large hydrogen demands, the cost of renewable energy represents the single most relevant cost of the green hydrogen value chain. For medium and small hydrogen demands the combined cost of conversion, processing, transport and storage possess a similar weight to the energy costs on the total hydrogen cost. On the other hand, for the selected locations, the transport of compressed gas by pipelines is the most competitive for the larger demands, and compressed gas transportation by trucks for the small demands, as expected. For a medium demand of 15 tH2/d it was found that larger distances favor the liquid organic hydrogen carrier transportation by trucks while shorter distances favor compressed gas transportation by trucks. Finally, a greater maturity of electrolyzers, hydrogen storage systems and renewable generation are expected to significantly reduce the cost of hydrogen production in the medium term, which will allow decreasing the total cost of hydrogen from 3.5 USD/kgH2 in 2022 to 2.3 USD/kgH2 in 2030.