Techno-economic Assessment on Hybrid Energy Storage Systems Comprising Hydrogen and Batteries: A Case Study in Belgium

This paper introduces a Techno-Economic Assessment (TEA) on present and future scenarios of different energy storage technologies comprising hydrogen and batteries: Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), Hydrogen Energy Storage System (H2ESS), and Hybrid Energy Storage System (HESS). These three configurations were assessed for different time horizons: 2019, 2022 and 2030, under both on-grid and off-grid conditions. For 2030, a sensitivity analysis under different energy scenarios was performed, covering other trends in on-grid electric consumption and prices, CO2 taxation and the evolution of hydrogen technology prices from 2019 until 2030. The selected case study is the Research Park Zellik (RPZ), a CO2- neutral sustainable Local Energy Community (LEC) in Zellik, Belgium. The software HOMER (Hybrid Optimisation Model for Electric Renewable) has been selected to design, model and optimise the defined case study. The results showed that BESS was the most competitive when the electric grid was available among the three possible storage options. Additionally, HESS was overall more competitive than H2ESS-only, regardless of the grid connection mode. Finally, as per HESS, hydrogen was proved to play a complementary role when combined with batteries, enhancing the flexibility of the microgrid and enabling deeper decarbonisation by reducing the electricity bought from the grid, increasing renewable energy production and balancing toward an island operating mode.