the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 26 Sep 2023
Optimal Position and Distribution Mode for On-Site Hydrogen Electrolyzers in Onshore Wind Farms for minimal LCoH
Thorsten Reichartz
Georg Jacobs
Tom Rathmes
Lucas Blickwedel
Ralf Schelenz
Abstract. Storing energy is a major challenge in achieving a 100 % renewable energy system. One promising approach is the production of green hydrogen from wind power. This work proposes a method for optimizing the design of wind-hydrogen systems for existing onshore wind farms in order to achieve the lowest possible Levelized Cost of Hydrogen (LCoH). This is done by application of a novel Python-based optimization model, that iteratively determines the optimal electrolyzer position and distribution mode of Hydrogen for given wind farm layouts. The model includes the costs of all required infrastructure components. It considers peripheral factors such as existing and new roads, necessary power cables and pipelines, wage and fuel costs for truck transportation and the distance to the Point of Demand (POD). Based on the results, a decision can be made whether to distribute the hydrogen to the POD by truck or pipeline.
For a 23.8 MW onshore wind farm in Germany, minimal LCoH of 4.58 € kg−1H2 at an annual hydrogen production of 241.4 tH2 a−1 are computed. These results are significantly affected by the position of the electrolyzer, the distribution mode, varying wind farm and electrolyzer sizes, as well as distance to POD. The influence of the ratio of electrolyzer power to wind farm power is also investigated. The ideal ratio between rated power of electrolyzer and wind farm lies at around 10 % and a resulting capacity factor of 78 % for the given case.
The new model can be used by system planners and researchers to improve and accelerate the planning process for wind-hydrogen systems. Additionally, the economic efficiency, hence competitiveness of wind-hydrogen systems is increased, which contributes to an urgently needed accelerated expansion of electrolyzers. The results of the influencing parameters on LCoH will help to set development goals and indicate a path towards cost-competitive green wind-hydrogen.
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Thorsten Reichartz et al.
Status: final response (author comments only)
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RC1: 'Comment on wes-2023-113', Anonymous Referee #1, 30 Oct 2023
General comments:
The manuscript addresses the timely and crucial topic of optimal infrastructures and placement of wind-hydrogen systems to reduce Levelised Cost of Hydrogen (LCoH). The study is of interest both for industries and the research field, as it sheds light on the planning process for wind-hydrogen systems.
While the manuscript presents an interesting case-study, it needs to position the novelty compared to existing literature. There exists a vast amount of studies and models that compute the cost of producing hydrogen (and even other Power-to-X fuels), connected to wind farms (onshore and offshore), in hybrid solar PV-Wind systems, with and without connection to the electricity grid, and at specific locations or integrated in energy hubs. The study could benefit from considering the existing literature in the field, to emphasize the new aspects addressed in this study, and compare the obtained results (LCoH) with other studies.
The study include interesting aspects related to the infrastructure needed for different wind-hydrogen layouts. However, there are some specific comments/questions, which hopefully can be clarified before publication.
Specific comments:
The manuscript encompasses relevant parameters related to infrastructure planning – and is indeed relevant for system planners realizing these wind-hydrogen systems. However, there are some crucial assumptions, which might impact the results, and the manuscript could benefit from discussing these assumptions and potential impacts (e.g. based on findings in the existing literature). Among the crucial assumptions are, e.g., 1) efficiency changes depending on operation, 2) wake effect losses are neglected, 3) potential excess heat revenues, 4) availability of using grid electricity and/or hydrogen production from wind-solar PV systems. Also please, reflect upon the obtained results (LCoH) in related to other existing studies, and their potential uncertainties.
An overview of existing literature must be integrated to highlight the novelty of the paper and/or to align with other studies. The current statement p. 2, line 40-41 “No relevant literature could be identified that quantifies leverage or describes how to generate optimal solutions for the given case”, could therefore be reconsidered.
Many of the input parameters are well-documented in the manuscript, however, how did you obtain the wind profiles for the two different onshore wind farms (23.8 MW, and 58.5 MW)? Furthermore, it is a bit unclear how the electrolyzer capacity at 2 MW and 10 MW, respectively to the two onshore wind farms, were determined?
In section 4 “Discussion and further work” please, search within the literature if hybrid power plants (p 17, line 414-415) and/or purchasing electricity from the grid (p. 18, line 431-428) have already been modelled and studied. If so, please reformulate the parts related to future work.
Technical corrections:
Minor typing errors, etc.
- g. p3. Line 93: Be consistent with LCoE (is the E for electricity or energy)?
- 3, line 95, use hydrogen throughout the text (not H2).
- 8. Three times a Table is references, but without the Table “number”.
- 9, line 235 and 240, reference should be within the sentence.
- 9, line 237, references are repeated three times.
- 9, line 295. It seems that “-“ should be “.”
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2023-113-RC1 -
RC2: 'Comment on wes-2023-113', Anonymous Referee #2, 29 Nov 2023
Minor Edits:
Line 42: "folling" -> "following"
Line 46: niveau is a french word, I believe. Should be "level" instead?
Line 80: "as often used" should be "as is often used"
Line 86: "The lifetime is of each..." -> "The lifetime of each ..."
Line 109: "Especially since PEMEL ..." -> "Since PEMEL ..."
Line 153: "of the electrolyzer. l_cabel." extra period?
Line 186: "additional degree of freedom are..." -> "additional degree of freedom is..."
Table 2: in the lifetime column, what does "a" stand for?
Line 347: "almost linear." -> "almost linearly."
Major Questions:
Line 123: Is the electrolyzer using all of the energy from the wind farm that it can? Is it assumed that selling hydrogen is more profitable than electricity? Please state your assumptions here.
Lines 283-284: How is the optimization calculated? Is it trying out all of the combinations? How would this scale with land area, for example?
Line 292: Might be good to reference later in the paper where you do a study for optimum electrolyzer size. Also, is the extra electricity produced sold to the grid? Is this included in the calculation? How does this affect the profitability of the wind farm?
Figure 6: It's hard to tell the two blue lines apart on the figure, especially since they're almost on top of each other. Could one be a different color?
Line 377: Could you describe the scenarios in Figure 9 in a bit more detail up front?
Line 394: Does this mean that the hydrogen used for transportation is not taken out of the total hydrogen produced? Can you offer thoughts on how this would affect the dominance of this method over ling distances?Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-2023-113-RC2
Thorsten Reichartz et al.
Thorsten Reichartz et al.
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