Optimal sizing of renewables-to-hydrogen systems in a suitable-site-selection geospatial framework: The case study of Italy and Portugal

Growing renewable energy deployment worldwide has sparked a shift in the energy landscape with far-reaching geopolitical ramifications. Hydrogen’s role as an energy carrier is central to this change, facilitating global trade and the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate sectors. This analysis offers a new method for optimally sizing solar/wind-to-hydrogen systems in specifically suitable locations. These locations are limited to the onshore and offshore regions of selected countries, as determined by a bespoke geospatial analysis developed to be location-agnostic. Furthermore, the research focuses on determining the best configurations for such systems that minimise the cost of producing hydrogen, with the optimisation algorithm expanding from the detailed computation of the classic levelised cost of hydrogen. One of the study’s main conclusions is that the best hybrid configurations obtained provide up to 70% cost savings in some areas. Such findings represent unprecedented achievements for Italy and Portugal and can be a valuable asset for economic studies of this kind carried out by local and national governments across the globe. These results validate the optimisation model’s initial premise, significantly improving the credibility of this work by constructively challenging the standard way of assessing large-scale green hydrogen projects.