Coordination and planning of offshore wind hydrogen production systems: A case study in South Wales

Offshore wind hydrogen production (WHP) provides an alternative for long-distance delivery of offshore wind generation and enables green hydrogen supply to various sectors. This paper proposes a modelling framework to simulate techno-economics of multiple offshore WHP systems for hydrogen supply to onshore consumers and optimise hydrogen system capacities to either maximise their net present values or minimise levelised costs of hydrogen. A set of operating strategies are designed to coordinate power and hydrogen flows across multiple WHP systems to supply onshore hydrogen demands while balancing state of charge levels between storage tanks. The proposed modelling framework is tested based on a case study of South Wales combined with the techno-economic inputs of 2019, 2030 or 2050 scenario. The optimisation results of WHP systems are compared between the two objective functions and also between the three scenarios, and discussed around the effects of objective functions and technology advances on system planning in South Wales.