LCOH May Be Lower Than Currently Estimated

By Ian Page – 2021.11.12

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/11/11/novel-way-to-calculate-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen-generated-by-offgrid-pv/

A big issue is the levelized cost of hydrogen electrolysis from solar.

Typically, I have seen figures of $4/kg.

This paper finds that the energy produced by a PV array is higher than usually estimated (using actual data, which helps!) and finds a better estimation method for the LCOH.

The journalist then gets a bit confusing.

Grey hydrogen costs $1.34-2.4.

They calculate $2.36 for green hydrogen in Australia (PV alkaline electrolyser, grid connected but PV goes directly to the electrolyser).

Then it's not clear whether they have used a 100% use function for the electrolyser (50KW electrolyser with 100Kw PV array and battery) whereas elsewhere they refer to not having allowed for battery costs.

There is obviously a range of costs based from 100% utilization of the electrolysis with battery support, to 50% utilization with no battery support and all the cases in between. where cost of batteries and electrolysis both decrease over time but at different rates.

Thus, this paper sounds like a useful base for estimating the actual LCOH over time with changes in technology if they have added these components to their model.

Anyway, it does sound as though even before the rise in gas prices green hydrogen was approaching grey hydrogen costs.

PS: Morocco

Almost uniquely the coast of morocco, using coastal generated winds and solar, can deliver pretty reliable and predictable continuous green electricity in gigawatt quantities. This implies that alkaline electrolysers (which don’t like variable electricity at present) would probably deliver hydrogen at the lowest LCOH simply because of the lower amount of battery needed for continuous operation. The above model might be able to estimate this.


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