Techno-Economic Study of Adding Hydrogen Storage to PV Plant in Neom City

Abstract

Based on its 2030 vision Saudi Arabia seeks future renewable clean energy as an essential input into most industrial sector production processes. As a model, Neom city is targeted 100 % dependent on renewable energy, limiting climate change caused by CO2 emissions. On the other hand, hydrogen as a clean energy source has gained much attention in recent years. Moreover, hydrogen storage is considered a promising energy carrier that can be merged in the renewable energy system to store a large amount of energy. The research focuses on adding hydrogen storage in a photovoltaic (PV) plant in Neom city represents the vision "2030" to limit CO2 emission. Hydrogen storage could provide a fully renewable and clean power source for fixed and mobile applications. Must scaled-up hydrogen production and the legislative framework needed to define commercial deployment models explicitly. More technology advancements are expected to minimize the associated costs of extraction, storage, and transportation and more investment in the infrastructure supporting Neom city. This work presents a techno-economic study of adding hydrogen storage to a photovoltaic (PV) plant in Neom city. Utilizing the System Advisor Model (SAM) software to calculate the payback period (PP) and the intern rate of return (IRR), and other economic parameters of the project with and without adding the hydrogen storage. The net present value of PV plant with hydrogen storage is considered $6,887,662, which means more time value of money from the supplied value. The techno-economic assessment of this study was limited to a PV plant with a total capacity of 30 MW on-grid.