Technoeconomic, environmental and multi criteria decision making investigations for optimisation of off-grid hybrid renewable energy system with green hydrogen production

The current study presents a comprehensive investigation of various energy system configurations for a remote village community in India with entirely renewable electricity. Excess electricity generated by the systems has been stored using two types of energy storage options: lithium-ion batteries and green hydrogen production through the electrolysers. The hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) configurations have been sized by minimising the levelised cost of energy (LCOE). In order to identify the best-performing HRES configuration, economic and environmental performance indicators has been analysed using the multi-criteria decision-making method (MCDM), TOPSIS. Among the evaluated system configurations, system-1 with a photovoltaic panel (PV) size of 310.24 kW, a wind turbine (WT) size of 690 kW, a biogas generator (BG) size of 100 kW, a battery (BAT) size of 174 kWh, an electrolyser (ELEC) size of 150 kW, a hydrogen tank (HT) size of 120 kg, and a converter (CONV) size of 106.24 kW has been found to be the best-performing system since it provides the highest relative closeness (RC) value (similar to 0.817) and also has the lowest fuel consumption rate of 2.31 kg/kWh. However, system-6 shows the highest amount of CO2 (143.97 kg/year) among all the studied system configurations. Furthermore, a detailed technical, economic, and environmental analysis has been conducted on the optimal HRES configuration. The minimum net present cost (NPC), LCOE, and cost of hydrogen (COH) for system 1 has been estimated to be $1,960,584, $0.44/kWh, and $22.3/kg, respectively.