Technical, Economic, Carbon Footprint Assessment, and Prioritizing Stations for Hydrogen Production Using Wind Energy: A Case Study

While Afghanistan’s power sector is almost completely dependent on fossil fuels, it still cannot meet the rising power demand of this country. Deploying a combination of renewable energy systems with hydrogen production as the excess energy storage mechanism could be a sustainable long-term approach for addressing some of the energy problems of Afghanistan. Since Badakhshan is known to have a higher average wind speed than any other Afghan province, in this study, a technical, economic, and carbon footprint assessment was performed to investigate the potential for wind power and hydrogen production in this province. Wind data of four stations in Badakhshan were used for technical assessment for three heights of 10, 30, and 40 m using the Weibull probability distribution function. This technical assessment was expanded by estimating the energy pattern factor, probability of wind speeds greater than 5 m/s, wind power density, annual power output, and annual hydrogen output. This was followed by an economic assessment, which involved computing the Leveled Cost Of Energy (LCOE), the Leveled Cost Of Hydrogen (LCOH), and the payback period, and finally an carbon footprint assessment, which involved estimating the consequent CO2 reduction in two scenarios. The assessments were performed for 22 turbines manufactured by reputable companies with capacities ranging from 600 kW to 2.3 MW. The results showed that the entire Badakhshan province, and especially Qal’eh-ye Panjeh and Fayazabad, have excellent potentials in terms of wind energy that can be harvested for wind power and hydrogen production. Also, wind power generation in this province will be highly cost-effective, as the produced electricity will cost about one-third of the price of electricity supplied by the government. For better evaluation, the GIS maps of wind power and hydrogen outputs were prepared using the IDW method. These maps showed that the eastern and northeastern parts of Badakhshan province have higher wind power-hydrogen production potentials. The results of ranking the stations with SWARA-EDAS hybrid MCDM methods showed that Qal’eh-ye Panjeh station was the best location to produce hydrogen from wind energy.