Developing and applying the Hydrogen Economics and infRAstructure optimization model (HERA)

This study aims at developing the Hydrogen Economics and InfRAstructure optimization model (HERA) to support the technical-economic assessment of hydrogen supply chain infrastructures. It is developed at an hourly scale, in Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MIP), and includes the hydrogen production and delivery via road transportation or pipelines, as well as hydrogen and electricity storage options. To be tested, HERA was applied in a case study, to compare two different locations for hydrogen production. Findings show that the use of HERA can support the technical-economic assessment of a hydrogen infrastructure, highlighting the impact of the distance between the hydrogen production site and the demand, and the use of batteries and complementary renewable resources, to smooth the variability, on total costs. Besides, the proposed model was able to find out the optimal equipment combination for the supply chain by considering the modular (integer) nature of the problem to be solved.