An Analysis and Optimisation of the Addition of BESS to Produce Hydrogen from Seawater

This article presents the development and implementation of an optimisation model to size the components of a system to produce green hydrogen from desalinated sea water, in order to determine the effect that BESS (and particularly its cost) would have on the sizing of other components. A linear optimisation model was successfully produced in Pyomo in the Python environment, and used a PEM electrolyser, lithium BESS, Solar PV and a reverse osmosis desalination plant as inputs. The results show that if a daily amount of hydrogen needs to be produced, BESS enhances the plant operational characteristics with BESS capital costs not drastically impacting the overall capital cost. This is because the BESS allows a smaller electrolyser to be utilised and be ran for extended periods of time than just PV generation would allow. It also allows production to still occur on the few days with low solar production even within a desert environment. Furthermore, cost and energy-wise, the desalination component of the system is a small percentage.