Assessing the techno-economic feasibility of hydrogen refueling stations using advanced algorithms: A case study

The high population growth rate, the accelerated industrialization and unpredictability of oil prices in the world have considerably raised the energy demand which has enhanced the necessity of alternative and sustainable sources of power generation. Traditional fossil-fuel-based energy generators are not only economically sensitive to changes in the price of fuel but also is a serious environmental issue. These are the reasons that make the need to develop cost-effective, clean, and reliable energy solutions to meet the new applications like hydrogen refueling stations (HRSs). This paper involved a systematic assessment of the techno-economic viability and the operating range of the hybrid energy solutions based on renewable sources to supply power to a hydrogen refueling station in Lagos, Nigeria. The model employed was the Hybrid Optimization Model of Electric Renewables (HOMER Pro) and used to evaluate various hybrid options. One of the options analyzed, photovoltaic–wind turbine–battery (PV–WT-B) hybrid system proved the most economical solution with the Net Present Cost (NPC), Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), and Levelized Cost of Hydrogen (LCOH) of $ 24,996.78, $ 0.01564/kWh, and $ 0.516/kg, respectively. To make the optimization results more robust, the HOMER Pro results were further compared with the high-tech metaheuristic methods, such as Constrained Particle Swarm Optimization (CPSO), the Mayfly Algorithm (MA), and the Genetic Algorithm (GA). Among them, CPSO had better performance which resulted in the less NPC of USD 224,430 and the HOMER-based optimization results were lower in terms of minimizing cost. In general, the results indicate that the combination of renewable-based hybrid energy systems, along with the current development of optimization algorithms, can contribute to the significant increase of the economic competitiveness of hydrogen refueling infrastructure and its sustainability. The outcome of this study provides useful information to policy makers, planners, and investors who want to install effective and scalable hydrogen refueling stations in the fast-growing urban centers with similar hydrogen demand patterns, grid reliability, land-use restrictions, policy settings, and environmental conditions.