Study at Novia UAS Developed Framework for Profit Assessment of P2X2P Facilities

A new study conducted at Novia University of Applied Sciences, published in the journal Applied Energy, explores the potential for integrating advanced energy storage systems into future smart grids. 

The energy transition required to mitigate climate change depends on renewable energy. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power do not provide constant energy, which means that more flexibility is needed in the power system to handle these variations. 

One way to create more flexibility is to use so-called power-to-X-to-power (P2X2P) facilities, which function as energy storage systems by converting electricity to hydrogen (P2X) when electricity prices are low and then back to electricity (X2P) when prices are high. However, it is difficult to assess the profitability of these facilities. 

In the study at Novia University of Applied Sciences, Johan Westö, Ray Pörn, Ashish Dahal, and Mats Borg have developed a framework to assess the potential profit of a planned P2X2P facility participating in the sequential electricity markets in Europe. 

The results show that the facility is mostly inactive with the most profitable operating strategies, but there are synergies between different markets and fuel combinations that can significantly increase the potential profit. This emphasizes the importance of investigating realistic operating strategies for different market and fuel combinations when evaluating P2X2P facility designs. 

The study was conducted within the project FESIO - Flexible Energy Systems Integration and Optimization at Novia University of Applied Sciences, funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture. 

The study will be published in the journal Applied Energy in August 2025 and is available open access at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2025.125838  

The authors of the article are Johan Westö, Ray Pörn, Ashish Dahal, and Mats Borg at Novia.