Optimal design and energy management of a green hydrogen-driven multi-energy microgrid: A Morocco case study

Integrating green hydrogen into renewable-based microgrids offers promising opportunities to decarbonize multiple energy sectors. In this context, this paper proposes a multi-energy microgrid model with a detailed physical modeling of the complete hydrogen value chain, covering water desalination for electrolyzer supply, hydrogen production via electrolysis, multi-stage compression, cooling processes, multi-level hydrogen storage, and hydrogen distribution to multiple end-use demands. To enhance overall system efficiency, waste heat recovered from compressor intercoolers, the refueling station pre-cooler, and the fuel cell is explicitly valorized to supply thermal loads, enabling co-generation and contributing to the decarbonization of heat demand. The system configuration and day-ahead planning are optimized through an enhanced Particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. A realistic case study based on Casablanca, Morocco, is conducted to validate the proposed approach. The simulation results highlight a technically feasible multi-energy microgrid configuration. From an economic perspective, the optimized system achieves positive daily net profitability, primarily driven by hydrogen sales revenues associated with refueling and delivery, with a competitive levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) of 4.53 €/kg. From an environmental standpoint, the system results in a 94.6 % decrease in CO2 emissions relative to a conventional grid-based supply.