Samenvatting

Renewable energy systems are a crucial technological development needed to combat climate change. This thesis covers the design and implementation of a mathematical optimization model, which calculates the lowest cost of hydrogen for certain renewable energy system configurations. The output of the model can be used to indicate possible costs of hydrogen, for different energy systems configurations and end uses such a
mobility and heating. The research was set up to answer the following research question: Which component
sizes lead to the lowest levelized cost of hydrogen for different energy system configurations and meets the various demands (hydrogen for heating, hydrogen for mobility, electricity use) and emission limits at all times? The energy system is assumed to possibly consist of the following variable size components: wind energy generators,
solar energy generators, grey grid electricity, battery system, electrolyser, heating hydrogen storage, mobility hydrogen storage and fixed size components: gas receiving station, refueling compressor and hydrogen refueling station.
The model was formulated as a linear programming problem. A hydrogen project being developed in Hoogeveen, The Netherlands, was used as a case study to implement the model. In order to analyze the effects of the used energy system components, various renewable energy system configurations were optimized using the model.
Analysis of the operational performance of one of these scenarios was consistent, showing no strange trends, thus indicating possible real-life operation. After analyzing the results of the optimized energy system configurations, the following observations where apparent: All of the systems prefer grid electricity uptake over renewable electricity generation for a majority of electricity supply if no constraints are applied to the system. The grid electricity uptake percentage of variable costs is also the highest cost component for these scenarios. Putting an emission constraint on the system increases the cost. Hydrogen storage lowers the cost when used in emission constrained systems but at high capacities. Storage also becomes the highest percentage of variable cost for these scenarios. Solar scenarios lead to the highest costs followed by wind and combined wind and solar have the lowest costs. The lowest costs calculated by the model for hydrogen for heating are 21.3 €/kg H2 with no emission constraint and 28€/kg H2 with an emission constraint. The component sizes for this hydrogen for heating system are power generation equivalence of 1.071 60 kW
wind turbine units, 6723.8 MWh grid uptake, 7473 kWh heating storage capacity and 182.8 kW electrolyser capacity for the no emission constraint scenario. For the emission constraint scenario, the component sizes are power generation equivalence of 3.179 60 kW wind turbine units, 2214.7 MWh grid uptake, 177.2 kWh battery capacity, 165.9 kW
electrolyser capacity and 52928 kWh hydrogen heating storage capacity. For mobility this would be 30.37 and 34.32 €/kg H2. The mobility hydrogen system component sizes follow the same tendencies as the heating hydrogen system, which are mentioned above.
Previous literature gives costs of hydrogen production ranging 0.94 to 20 €/kg for heating and ranging 3.2-29.7 €/kg for mobility. The costs determined by this model are on the higher end of these ranges and do not seem extreme, and with costs on the lower range being deemed cost competitive, indicates significant cost reductions being
needed before hydrogen becomes competitive with conventional technologies.