A Feasibility Study Using Renewable Energy to Produce Hydrogen for an Off-Grid, Stand-Alone Microgrid in Rural Communities

The study aims to explore the feasibility of using a standalone microgrid for a rural community located in the northern region of Queensland in Australia that incorporates both solar and wind energy to produce electricity that can be used immediately or stored in a Lithium-ion battery or to produce hydrogen (used as an energy carrier) that can later produce electricity at a time when there is higher energy demand. The feasibility attempts to provide a techno-economic analysis based on the net present cost and cost of electricity of several scenarios that model different configurations that incorporate a combination of renewable resources and storage methods to determine the most suitable option that exhibits the least cost to transition the community to a carbon-neutral system by using Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources software.