English Abstract
Abstract :
Renewable energy (RE) has become a major research focus for its role in sustainable solutions and environmental challenges. Concurrently, integrating energy storage systems (ESS) with RE addresses intermittency and optimizes energy balance. In recent years, green hydrogen (GH) derived from RE sources has emerged as a promising energy carrier with superior attributes. This study investigates the unexplored potential of GH as an energy storage solution in the context of the Kingdom of Bahrain. It seeks to assess the technical and economic characteristics of integrating GH with the PV- powered system across different locations and scenarios under Bahrain's circumstances. The study comprises three main stages: modeling and simulating the proposed system across four suggested sites in Bahrain, evaluating various scenarios and pathways in the winning site, and conducting sensitivity analysis for different input variables. The proposed system integrates PV modules with a regenerative fuel cell (RFC) block and a battery pack for surplus energy storage. All modeling and simulation processes were performed using HOMER Pro Software. In the results, Al-Dur Industrial Area exhibited the most favorable technical and economic characteristics for implementing the proposed system, with an annual energy yield of approximately 1,677.33 kWh/kWp. The levelized cost of energy (LCOE) at the winning site was determined to be $0.398/kWh (BD 0.151/kWh), which is considered high relative to local electricity rates. Conversely, the levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) exhibited a notably elevated value of $478/kg (BD 181.64/kg), primarily due to limited annual H2 production. Furthermore, while increasing annual H2 production reduces the LCOH, it also leads to substantial cost increases due to the higher capacity required for H2 production and the associated costs of RFC components. These findings suggest that utilizing GH technology is currently not a feasible option, especially on a large scale. Furthermore, the scenarios at the winning site revealed that the configuration utilizing a battery pack was deemed the most feasible, followed by the hybrid system. The GH-integrated configuration ranked last and could potentially increase total expenditures by up to 49% compared to the conventional PV-battery combination. However, the grid-connected configuration demonstrated better results, achieving a 77.8% reduction in the NPC and avoiding approximately 30 tons of CO2 emissions annually through PV generation. Therefore, this scenario emerged as the most favorable option in the current context with an LCOE of $0.0753/kWh (BD 0.029/kWh). Subsequently, the first sensitivity
analysis identified the optimal PV orientation and its impact on annual PV generation. In addition, it was found that the capital cost of PV modules and PEME system has the most significant impact on the NPC and LCOE. The analysis also highlighted that the electrolyzer's capacity significantly affects both the LCOE and LCOH, with a strong correlation with the number of batteries. Accordingly, optimizing system sizing based on technical and economic constraints is crucial for enhancing the project's feasibility.
