TY - JOUR
T1 - Economic analysis of a proton exchange membrane electrolyser cell for hydrogen supply scenarios in Japan
AU - Yoshida, Akira
AU - Nakazawa, Hiroto
AU - Kenmotsu, Naoki
AU - Amano, Yoshiharu
N1 - Funding Information:
Part of this work was carried out under the cooperative research project with Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2022/7/15
Y1 - 2022/7/15
N2 - Hydrogen production using variable renewable energy surplus electricity that called Power-to-Gas is attracting attention as a grid stabilization technology. However, there is an issue that Power-to-Gas is low economically viable to use only for stabilizing of variable renewable energy output. The objective of this article is to evaluate the economic efficiency of the Power-to-Gas system based on the optimal operation strategies by using electricity from both an on-site photovoltaic system and an electric power exchange market, assuming a specific situation in Japan in the near future. The Power-to-Gas plant considered in this article consists of a 1 MW proton exchange membrane electrolyser cell, which has already started demonstration tests, a hydrogen storage tank, and a 3 MW photovoltaic system. An operational planning problem of the plant to optimize the annual hydrogen production schedule is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming problem, and the economic efficiency is evaluated using the optimized unit price of hydrogen production as an evaluation index. The result shows that the hydrogen unit price is improved by using the power exchange market in addition to on-site photovoltaic due to the improvement of the utilization rate of cell. Case 1 with no constraints of hydrogen storage which has a large impact on hydrogen unit price marks 46.8 JPY/NM3 of the best hydrogen unit price, and Case 2-1, in which a fixed amount of hydrogen is produced continuously and transported by gas piping, improves 5.8 JPY/Nm3 of the hydrogen unit price compared to Case 2-2, in which batch transportation by a loader. From the sensitivity analysis of varying the depreciation cost of electrolyser cell and the price of the power market, it was concluded that the target unit cost of hydrogen production of less than 30 JPY/Nm3 can be obtained by decreasing the depreciation cost of the cell by 50% and the price of the market by 30%.
AB - Hydrogen production using variable renewable energy surplus electricity that called Power-to-Gas is attracting attention as a grid stabilization technology. However, there is an issue that Power-to-Gas is low economically viable to use only for stabilizing of variable renewable energy output. The objective of this article is to evaluate the economic efficiency of the Power-to-Gas system based on the optimal operation strategies by using electricity from both an on-site photovoltaic system and an electric power exchange market, assuming a specific situation in Japan in the near future. The Power-to-Gas plant considered in this article consists of a 1 MW proton exchange membrane electrolyser cell, which has already started demonstration tests, a hydrogen storage tank, and a 3 MW photovoltaic system. An operational planning problem of the plant to optimize the annual hydrogen production schedule is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming problem, and the economic efficiency is evaluated using the optimized unit price of hydrogen production as an evaluation index. The result shows that the hydrogen unit price is improved by using the power exchange market in addition to on-site photovoltaic due to the improvement of the utilization rate of cell. Case 1 with no constraints of hydrogen storage which has a large impact on hydrogen unit price marks 46.8 JPY/NM3 of the best hydrogen unit price, and Case 2-1, in which a fixed amount of hydrogen is produced continuously and transported by gas piping, improves 5.8 JPY/Nm3 of the hydrogen unit price compared to Case 2-2, in which batch transportation by a loader. From the sensitivity analysis of varying the depreciation cost of electrolyser cell and the price of the power market, it was concluded that the target unit cost of hydrogen production of less than 30 JPY/Nm3 can be obtained by decreasing the depreciation cost of the cell by 50% and the price of the market by 30%.
KW - Electric power exchange
KW - Hydrogen
KW - Photovoltaic
KW - Power-to-Gas
KW - Proton exchange membrane electrolyser cell
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U2 - 10.1016/j.energy.2022.123943
DO - 10.1016/j.energy.2022.123943
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85128232894
SN - 0360-5442
VL - 251
JO - Energy
JF - Energy
M1 - 123943
ER -