Screening & concept-select: pick a location, size the design, and let the optimizer find the best combination of cost, carbon compliance and reliability. For screening purposes only — use a higher fidelity model for engineering and financial feasibility.
Constraints
Choose which limits apply before you design anything — the optimizer always minimises LCOH, but only among configurations that satisfy every constraint you switch on here. None selected means no limit beyond reliability. Every constraint below (and the min-availability requirement) allows a ±1% tolerance band around its value.
1Location
Determines which renewable sources are realistically available and their P10/P50/P90 generation range.
Or pick an exact point on the map and fetch live solar/wind resource data from NASA POWER's public climatology API (no key, no backend of ours involved) — hydro/geothermal aren't covered by this and stay at illustrative placeholders.
2Renewable sources
Each source has its own independent P10/P50/P90 capacity-factor forecast for this location — edit the range or the capacity.
3Water supply
Quantity, quality and the resulting wastewater/reject stream are computed from your electrolyser mix. Both water and wastewater cost are real inputs — edit them or verify the stated regional assumptions.
4Electrolyser fleet
Turndown determines how much of the variable generation each technology can actually use; maintenance derates availability year-round.
5Battery storage
Used to avoid shutdowns or keep electrolysers above their turndown minimum during generation dips.
6Grid power top-up (optional)
Let grid electricity fill any deficit renewables + battery can't cover, up to the electrolyser fleet's full rated capacity.
7Your starting configuration → optimizer
The optimizer searches locally from your design for the best margin — tiered sale revenue minus cost — not merely the lowest LCOH. It trades build cost against the premium that RFNBO-compliant hydrogen commands, while reliability stays a hard constraint. Set the carbon-tier prices below.
8Result — P50 case
Carbon intensity & RFNBO compliance
Carbon is attributed to water supply/treatment, wastewater treatment/disposal and — when enabled — grid power top-up. Solar, wind, hydro and geothermal generation are treated as zero-carbon at point of use. Equipment manufacturing carbon (panels, turbines, stacks, batteries) is NOT included.
Electrolyser capacity vs LCOH
Output by generation forecast (P90–P10)
One design tested against five weather futures: P90 is the conservative (low-resource) year, P50 the median, P10 the optimistic (high-resource) year — not five different designs.
Monthly production and generation profile
Project-life operating hours
Routine maintenance is already reflected hour-by-hour in the P50 case above. This adds periodic major turnarounds on top.
Shutdown recovery by technology
Power returning after a shutdown does not mean production resumes instantly — each technology has its own back-on-line delay.