Multiobjective mixed-integer programming for synchronizing hydrogen-based railway shunting with renewable energy systems

Hydrogen-powered locomotion with renewable energies is promising for decarbonizing rail freight transportation. This paper proposes a mixed integer programming framework for synchronizing the fuel hydrogen demand into renewable energy systems, incorporating operational profit, hydrogen inventory and system stability. The real-world data from Liuzhou South Marshaling Yard, China is taken to perform numerical studies, concerning resource development, hydrogen inventory, system stability, and energy performance. Firstly, substantial increase of renewable energy input improves the overall profit, while lesser increment can be consumed by randomly distributed fuel hydrogen demands. In all tested cases, increasing the demand for profit raises the hydrogen inventory turnover by less than 0.04%, highlighting the insignificant impact of inventory on profit. The system stability deteriorates over incrementing profit, and such trend intensifies given more renewable input. We invent “energy efficiency-mix” to evaluate energy performance, and the test results range in [ 0 . 599 , 0 . 614 ] and effectively indicate system energy performances. • Synchronizing renewable energy and hydrogen-powered railway shunting. • Optimizing fuel hydrogen production considering resource and demand uncertainty. • Hydrogen inventory turnover has insignificant impact on the overall profit. • System stability deteriorates with growing profit and input renewables. • The proposed energy efficiency-mix effectively maps the energy performance.