Green hydrogen as energy storage and energy carrier in combination with offshore wind power: Production, energy management and techno-economic analysis

Abstract

Hydrogen produced with renewable energy, also known as green hydrogen, could be a piece of the puzzle to reduce emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases from human activities. However, the production of green hydrogen is currently too expensive and wastes too much energy to be an economically viable large-scale solution. This PhD project therefore focused on the optimization of green hydrogen production with electricity from offshore wind farms to investigate the long-term potential of this concept. Several years of energy production data from a floating offshore wind turbine, electricity price data, and windspeed data from potential offshore wind farm locations were combined with computer models that were developed to predict wind energy production and simulate green hydrogen production. In addition to this, a price-based control system was developed to optimize the hydrogen production and reduce the production cost. Different scenarios were simulated, some that use available technology with current costs and some that use improved technologies with cost reductions that are predicted to be realized in the years up to 2050. The results show that the cost of green hydrogen can be significantly reduced by using a model that forecasts and optimizes the production of wind energy and hydrogen.