Hydrogen-enabled hybrid renewable microgrid for resilient hospital electrification: A techno-economic and environmental assessment

Hospitals in developing countries depend on national grids that fail frequently and unpredictably, and existing backup options diesel generators or battery-only systems are either costly and polluting or poorly suited to multi-hour outages. This study designs and optimizes a grid-connected hybrid renewable microgrid that pairs battery storage (for short outages) with on-site hydrogen production and reconversion (for longer, less frequent outages), sized specifically for a large tertiary hospital's critical load Tangail Medical College Hospital, Bangladesh representing the first such hydrogen-integrated hospital-scale microgrid optimization in South Asia. Using site-specific meteorological data, an equipment-level hospital load profile, and verified techno-economic parameters, HOMER Pro is applied to evaluate five system configurations under realistic grid outage conditions over a 25-year project lifetime. The optimal configuration achieves a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of USD 0.0378/kWh with a net present cost (NPC) of USD 3.73 million, sourcing approximately 77% of generation from renewables while reducing annual CO₂ emissions by 63%. Hydrogen is produced at USD 3.81/kg, offering a viable long-duration storage pathway. Sensitivity analysis identifies the discount rate and solar resource availability as the dominant economic drivers. Practical implementation challenges including high upfront capital, hydrogen supply chain limitations, and local technical capacity requirements are acknowledged as key deployment barriers. The findings provide a transferable framework for resilient electrification of healthcare infrastructure in grid-constrained developing economies.