Techno-economic assessment of solar hydrogen production using CPV-electrolysis systems

Interest in developing hydrogen production technologies stems from the need to develop another source of energy that is sustainable and environmentally friendly. This interest results also from the growth in energy needs for hydrogen as a feedstock. Water electrolysis is the sustainable and clean hydrogen production process that has reached the industrial maturity. In the present work, a techno-economic assessment of hydrogen production using an electrolyser-concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) system in Algeria is carried out. Different technologies of solar concentration and of photovoltaic modules are considered. The dependence of hydrogen production potential and of hydrogen production cost on these technologies is investigated. By comparison to common PV-electrolysis method, the CPV-electrolysis technique offers a much higher production rate at much more competitive cost. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.