Development and analysis of cost optimized system scenarios for hydrogen production with agrivoltaics and wind energy in India

Abstract

Green hydrogen and agrivoltaics technological development and uptake will happen rapidly in India in the coming years. Combination of solar energy and wind energy with auxiliary grid has been in use since many years for green hydrogen production. This study aims to now understand the feasibility of green hydrogen generation with agrivoltaics. Two objectives were defined for this study i.e, investigation of current status of use of hydrogen in the domain of agriculture and optimization of system design to minimize the levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) using the software MHOGA PRO+. The grid, wind energy and battery storage were considered as an auxiliary source wherever necessary. Four different agrivoltaic system types i.e., overhead static – arable farming, overhead static – permanent crops, interspace vertical and overhead dynamic were simulated in three configurations i.e, grid, grid to sell and off-grid to analyze and evaluate the feasibility of individual configurations for hydrogen production. Literature review was conducted to understand the synergies and extent of use of green hydrogen directly and indirectly in the field of agriculture. The most studied use cases for green hydrogen in agriculture were found to be source of energy for agricultural activities and machinery, use of the by-product oxygen in fish breeding and use of green ammonia as fertilizer. Interspace vertical system type was found out to be the most suitable system in this context for cost-efficient production of hydrogen with agrivoltaics. Interspace vertical with the auxiliary grid to sell is the most suitable configuration with a LCOH of 3.67 Eur/kg or 328 Rs/kg. It drops to 2.80 Eur/kg or 250 Rs/kg in 2050.