Operation Planning for Hydrogen Co-Combustion in Combined-Cycle Power Plants

Hydrogen Co-Combustion is seen as an important measure to reduce carbon dioxide emissions of gas combined-cycle power plants. Besides technical challenges, the addition of a new fuel introduces a need for more advanced economic planning, considering new and existing technical constraints as well as different types of legal incentives or constraints to reduce carbon emissions or increase hydrogen blending in gas-turbine combined cycle plants. The paper will demonstrate a gradient-based dynamic optimization routine that is applied to a natural gas-fired combined cycle power plant model with hydrogen co-combustion and real-world boundary conditions. It is used to investigate different legal boundary conditions such as reducing CO2 emission rights or prescribing minimum hydrogen-blend rates and study the effects produced energy, CO2 emissions and the operating result (EBITDA). Therefore, it provides guidance for plant operators, defining the right technological development for a given plant site, e.g. investing in increasing technical feasible hydrogen blending capabilities beyond the minimum legal requirements, planning hydrogen storage capacity for onsite production with electrolyzer or securing continuous hydrogen delivery with other methods, e.g. pipelines, tube-trailers, or ship delivery. In addition, the paper reveals how market participants will operate with variant legal boundary conditions. The findings can be used to validate suggested rules, e.g. EPA suggestion to introduce minimum hydrogen blend rates, the European emission trading systems penalizing CO2 emissions or cooperate sustainability targets enforcing CO2 reduction paths and how these will affect a plant site and resulting consequences for the electricity system.