Capacity Investment Decisions in Renewable Energy Technologies

Abstract

We study an organization's one-time capacity investment in a renewable technology with supply intermittency and net metering compensation. The renewable technology can be coupled with conventional technologies, such as purchasing electricity from the grid, to form a capacity portfolio that is used to meet stochastic demand for energy. Some factors that complicate this decision include the variability in the energy demand, energy prices, compensation for over-production by the energy producing technology and the intermittency of renewable energy producing technologies. We show how to reduce this problem to a single-period decision problem, and how to estimate the joint distribution of the stochastic factors using historical data. We obtain solutions that are simple to compute, intuitive, and provide managers with a framework for evaluating the trade-offs of investing in renewable and conventional technologies. We illustrate our model using a case study for investing in a solar rooftop system for a bank branch.

Optimal techno-enviro-economic analysis of a hybrid grid connected tidal-wind-hydrogen energy system

“…This simplified model has been deduced from the discussions with the electrolyser manufacturer, Elogen. The main specifications of the PEM electrolyser in the study [29] are used for the modelling part. The power consumption of the electrolyser units is limited to 500 kW (with the exception of electrolyser unit 2 with a functionality of 1000 kW for 3 hours).…”

“…The resultant specific energy consumption and hydrogen production of the electrolyser unit are shown in Figure 3. In parallel, the specific energy consumption of the electrolyser unit with respect to the percentage factor of the rated current, which is analogous to the rated power of a similar PEM electrolyser used in the study [29], is referred for validating the model. The advantage to refer to a new model based on energy consumption is the flexibility of the model application for different technologies, if the model parameters are fine tuned.…”

“…Floating tidal stream energy plant (twin rotor) CapEx (M€/MW) 4.89 [35] 1.758 [36] OpEx (M€/MW/year) 0.05 [19] 0.035 [36] Electrolyser units CapEx (€/kW) 1830 [33] 340 [33] OpEx (€/kW/year) 40 [33] 10 [33] Hydrogen compressor at 200 bar CapEx (€/kWcompressor power rating) 6887 [33] 2545 [33] OpEx (€/kW/year) 344 [37] 127 [37] High pressure hydrogen storage tank CapEx (€/kgH2day) 800 [29] [38] 380 [38].…”

“…Authors in [21] concluded that integrating an extra energy vector like hydrogen is desirable to increase the economic aspects of the whole system compared to typical tidal energy export to the grid alone revenue because of the present higher HSPs. Ferguson [29], investigated a supplydriven scenario for hydrogen generation using curtailed and non-curtailed power, which was powered by a wind/tidal integrated system. The hydrogen production cost was estimated to be lower for non-curtailed tidal power as the utilisation of the electrolyser increased.…”

Control of Wind Farm Power Output for Green Hydrogen Production without a Grid Connection

“…Each electrolyser bank is represented by an equivalent electrical subsystem, comprised of an internal voltage source, V i and an internal resistance, R i . V i and R i are determined by Equations ( 2) -(6) [39]. R cell = (T − T 0 )drt + r 0 (4)…”