Economic and ecologic feasibility of an electrolyser in combination with a hydropower plant

Abstract

Without a doubt, the world needs to be more sustainable and humanity has to indemnify the past mistakes. The climate change will most likely affect my life somehow in the future. My motivation is to participate in the energy transition into a greener future. With increasing numbers of fluctuating renewables in Germany, the production side barely matches the demand side, resulting in a lack of surplus production. Storing or converting electricity is one of the significant challenges in the following years. Therefore, the core objective of this thesis is, to find out which type of electrolyser might be the best to be operated with the electricity of a hydropower plant. After this step the economical and ecologic feasibility of an electrolyser, which should sell the produced green hydrogen at its current market value, is of interest.The polymer electrolyte membrane electrolysers seems to fulfil most of the requirements. The answer to our second question, does it make sense to invest into an electrolyser, is definitively yes. Until achieving a successful market ramp-up, a hydropower plant might provide the required constant electricity supply of around 7.000 full load hours per year, keeping the costs of investment and operation inrelationship low compared to the amount of produced hydrogen. Adding assumed costs into a profit and loss statement of around 2,5 Mil. € and including the plant operation costs, the whole project becomes tangible. Even if the electricity price increases from around 4 to 8 ct/kWh over 20 years, a 1,25 Megawatt electrolyser, is able to produce 150 tons of hydrogen at a price of 5€/kg. Besides a competitive production price of green hydrogen, the ecological benefit is vast. The later use of hydrogen in the transportation sector might significantly benefit battling global warming. Evaluating the benefits of hydrogen by comparing different conventional technologies; The use of fuel cell vehicles (13,5 g/km CO2 Equivalent) compared to an internal combustion vehicles (159 g/km CO2 Equivalent) reduces the emissions by 91,5%! This thesis shows that even though green hydrogen production is still at the beginning, starting to produce it now and built up a regional market is already economically and ecologically feasible. Nevertheless, the regional market development initiative and finding a demand side is a core aspect of hydrogen production. What is the point of producing cheap green hydrogen if no one is willing to buy it?