Cross-regional electricity and hydrogen deployment research based on coordinated optimization: Towards carbon neutrality in China

In order to achieve carbon neutrality in a few decades, the clean energy proportion in power mix of China will significantly rise to over 90%. A consensus has been reached recently that it will be of great significance to promote hydrogen energy, that is produced by variable renewable energy power generation, as a mainstay energy form in view of its potential value on achieving carbon neutrality. This is because hydrogen energy is capable of complementing the power system and realizing further electrification, especially in the section that cannot be easily replaced by electric energy. Power system related planning model is commonly used for mid-term and long-term planning implemented through power installation and interconnection capacity expansion optimization. In consideration of the high importance of hydrogen and its close relationship with electricity, an inclusive perspective which contains both kinds of the foresaid energy is required to deal with planning problems. In this study, a joint model is established by coupling hydrogen energy model in the chronological operation power planning model to realize coordinated optimization on energy production, transportation and storage. By taking the carbon neutrality scenario of China as an example, the author applies this joint model to deploy a scheme research on power generation and hydrogen production, inter-regional energy transportation capacity, and hydrogen storage among various regions. Next, by taking the technology progress and cost decrease prediction uncertainty into account, the main technical–economic parameters are employed as variables to carry out sensitivity analysis research, with a hope that the quantitative calculation and results discussion could provide suggestion and reference to energy-related companies, policy-makers and institute researchers in formulating strategies on related energy development.