Techno-Economic Optimization of Wind-to-Hydrogen Integration for Progressive Curtailment Reduction Under Grid Export Constraints

The increasing penetration of wind power creates growing challenges related to renewable energy curtailment, grid flexibility, and the utilization of surplus renewable electricity. This paper develops a linear programming (LP) framework to assess the techno-economic potential of hydrogen production for a wind curtailment recovery under a constrained grid export capacity. The model jointly determines the sizing and hourly operation of a PEM electrolyzer, hydrogen compression system, and hydrogen storage system using an ERA5-based hourly wind generation profile for a utility-scale wind farm located in southern Morocco. Wind curtailment is explicitly derived from the difference between the hourly wind power output and the point-of-connection export limit. Surplus wind electricity is directed to a PEM electrolyzer, with the produced hydrogen compressed, stored, and sold to an external off-taker without reconversion to electricity. The results show that the reference wind farm exhibits approximately 29.2 GWh of annual curtailment. The complete recovery configuration consists of a 10.87 MW electrolyzer, a 0.413 MW hydrogen compressor, and a 37.78 t hydrogen storage capacity, producing 509.7 t H2 per yearand reducing residual curtailment to zero, with a levelized cost of hydrogen of 2.866 €/kg. Sensitivity analysis shows that progressively higher curtailment recovery requires increasing hydrogen conversion and storage capacities and results in higher LCOH under the assumed economic conditions. A sensitivity analysis of the aggregate wind farm loss factor further demonstrates the strong influence of effective wind energy availability on curtailment, hydrogen production, and system sizing. These findings demonstrate the techno-economic trade-off between hydrogen-based wind curtailment mitigation and the additional capacity required to achieve deeper reductions in residual curtailment under grid export constraints.