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POWER ENGINEERING: economics, technique, ecology
ISSN 1813-5420 · e‑ISSN 2308-7382 Open Access · CC BY 4.0
Vol. · Issue 3 · 2026 Oct 12, 2026 LIBERALIZED MARKETS OF ENERGY

THE IMPACT OF CRISIS MARKET CONDITIONS ON THE LEVELISED COST OF HYDROGEN

BM
Bogdan Maksymenko Corresponding National Technical University of Ukraine «Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute», Ukraine
SS
Sergii Shman National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”, Ukraine
Pages179-187 PublishedOct 12, 2026 LicenseOpen Access
PDF (Ukrainian)
VOL · ISS 3 · 2026 85 View issue

Abstract

The study establishes the effect of crisis conditions in the electricity market on the cost of hydrogen produced by electrolysis. A grid-connected hydrogen hub is considered: a solar power plant, optionally complemented by wind, with an electrolyser supplied by own generation and the grid.

Calculations are performed hour by hour, using actual day-ahead market prices. Three price years are used for Ukraine (2021, 2023, 2025) and three for the Germany-Luxembourg market zone, DE-LU (2020, 2022, 2025). These years are classified as calm or crisis: the 2022 European energy crisis and the wartime years in Ukraine (2023 and 2025).

For the base configuration (a 32 MW electrolyser with 64 MW of solar), moving from a calm to a crisis price year raises the cost of hydrogen by 46% in Ukraine and by a factor of 2.7 in the DE-LU zone, whereas replacing the climate site under unchanged prices changes it by only a few percent.

The impact of a crisis is proportional to its duration: one to three crisis years reduce the overall project result by only 7–31% of the gap between the calm and crisis scenarios, while the project as a whole remains profitable; it is the hydrogen chain, not the project, that falls below break-even under crisis prices. The Ukrainian transmission tariff adds a further 6–8% to the cost of hydrogen, and the effect grows with the tariff itself. Crisis prices do not halt the project but change its operating mode: average electrolyser utilisation falls from 93.1% in the calm year 2021 to 43.5% in the crisis year 2025 in Ukraine, and to 18.0% in DE-LU 2022.

The results provide a quantitative basis for risk assessment when planning grid-connected hydrogen hubs under unstable market conditions.

Keywords

#hydrogen #hydrogen hub #energy crisis #electricity price #levelised cost of hydrogen #electrolyser #day-ahead market

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Copyright (c) 2026 Bogdan Maksymenko, Sergii Shman

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