Network Representation on Hydrogen Production Siting
A controlled comparison of electricity grid and hydrogen network modelling in the North Sea region
T. Heutink (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
K. Bruninx – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
A.F. Correlje – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
L.S.F. Frowijn – Mentor (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
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Abstract
The North Sea is central to Europe's offshore wind and hydrogen ambitions, yet studies on where hydrogen production should be sited, onshore or offshore, reach conflicting conclusions. This disagreement is patterned: studies differ simultaneously in system boundary, cost assumptions, spatial resolution, and how they represent the electricity grid and hydrogen network, making it impossible to isolate what the network representation alone contributes to the siting answer. This thesis addresses that gap by holding all other assumptions fixed and varying only the network representation, within the Tulipa Energy Model applied to an integrated electricity and hydrogen system covering eight North Sea countries at NUTS-2 resolution.
Four scenarios cross two representation choices: the electricity grid as a transport model versus DC optimal power flow (DC-OPF), and the hydrogen network with no linepacking versus a four-hour linepacking approximation, for milestone years 2030 and 2040. A two-step design first sizes the onshore network under the transport formulation and holds it fixed across all four scenarios, isolating the effect of representation from differences in network capacity.
Electrolyser investment is predominantly onshore in every scenario, exceeding 80% of capacity throughout, with offshore electrolysis appearing only as a targeted addition at specific hubs, reaching at most 18.3% of the fleet. Moving from the transport model to DC-OPF shifts capacity toward offshore hubs and northern nodes, brings investment forward to 2030, and raises total capacity by roughly 15%. This shift follows directly from locational electricity prices: DC-OPF enforces flow physics that separate the network into distinct price areas, while the transport model prices nearly every node alike. Linepacking, by contrast, changes only how electrolysers operate within the day, leaving siting largely unchanged. Sensitivity analysis confirms the onshore-dominant result is robust to demand and network assumptions, but conditional on the offshore cost premium, the parameter most able to overturn it.
These findings show that the electricity grid representation, not the hydrogen network representation, is the decisive modelling choice for hydrogen siting studies in the North Sea, and that part of the disagreement in the existing literature may stem from this largely untested structural choice rather than from genuine disagreement about the underlying system.
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