Techno-economic investigation of hybrid peaker plant and hydrogen refuelling station

The power and transport sectors are responsible for significant emissions of greenhouse gases. Therefore, it is imperative that substantial efforts are directed towards the decarbonisation of these industries. This study establishes a combined-solar-wind system's economic and technical practicality for producing hydrogen for an onsite hydrogen refuelling station (HRS) and electricity to meet peak demand. To minimise the levelised cost of electricity and maximise the system's reliability at different commercial locations in South Africa, the dual-objective optimisation sizing is carried out using Mixed Integer Quadratic Constrained Programming (MICQP) model and was executed with an Advanced Multi-dimensional Modelling System (AIMMS) [61], [62]. The levelised costs of electricity and hydrogen at Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town for 2 MW grid export benchmark are 74.2 $/MWh/5.85 $/kg, 76.3 $/MWh/5.97 $/kg and 50 $/MWh/4.45 $/kg respectively. The CO₂ equivalent emissions (tonnes) are 54,000, 55,800, 59,000 and the corresponding carbon taxes ($) avoided for the locations are 432,100, 446,200, and 472,000 for Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town respectively. The results of the framework show that it can be adopted as a viable and fossil-free replacement for conventional peaking generators.