Integrating Power to Hydrogen in a Virtual Power Plant: A Cost-Benefit Analysis

Converting a part of power generated from renewables to hydrogen has recently become a topic worthy of discussion. Cost-benefit analysis for selling electricity at the market price or converting power to hydrogen is of great significance to the investors. This paper presents a comprehensive economic analysis of implementing a virtual power plant (VPP) in 220 residential dwellings in South Korea, with a total electricity consumption of 1200 kWh. This VPP includes wind Turbine, rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV), battery and hydrogen tank, and distributed generation (DG). For analyzing the data, we used a platform which optimized hydrogen and electricity networks separately in GAMS environment. In addition, with supposing fixed and variable costs of a VPP, financial cost and revenues are estimated by using the COMFAR software. Results show that by implementation of the VPP, expenditure cost of energy for consumers is decreased by up to 28%. Moreover, an 15% rate of return will be provided with less than nine years for the payback period for the owner.