Modelling and control of hydrogen and energy flows in a network of green hydrogen refuelling stations powered by mixed renewable energy systems

The planning of a hydrogen infrastructure with production facilities, distribution chains, and refuelling stations is a hard task. Difficulties may rise essentially in the choice of the optimal configurations. An innovative design of hydrogen network has been proposed in this paper. It consists of a network of green hydrogen refuelling stations (GHRSs) and several production nodes. The proposed model has been formulated as a mathematical programming, where the main decisions are the selection of GHRSs that are powered by the production nodes based on distance and population density criteria, as well the energy and hydrogen flows exchanged among the system components from the production nodes to the demand points. The approaches and methodologies developed can be taken as a support to decision makers, stakeholders and local authorities in the implementation of new hydrogen infrastructures. Optimal configurations have been reported taking into account the presence of an additional hydrogen industrial market demand and a connection with the electrical network. The main challenge that has been treated within the paper is the technical feasibility of the hydrogen supply chain, that is mainly driven by uncertain, but clean solar and wind energy resources. Using a Northern Italian case study, the clean hydrogen produced can be technically considered feasible to supply a network of hydrogen refuelling stations. Results show that the demands are satisfied for each time period and for the market penetration scenarios adopted.