HyEfRe Decision Support Tool
Better decisions for renewable and hydrogen energy investments
Deciding whether, where, and how to build a hydrogen-based energy hub is hard. It means weighing renewable resources, technology choices, market prices, and large capital costs all at once — and getting the size of each component right. The HyEfRe Decision Support Tool (DST) does that work for you. It automatically calculates the most cost-effective system design and how it should operate over a full year, so your decisions rest on solid techno-economic evidence rather than guesswork.
Clear answers to the questions that matter. The DST is built to answer the practical questions every planner and investor faces: How large should the solar plant, battery, or electrolyser be? Is a hydrogen hub financially viable at this location? What will it cost to build, and how long until the investment pays for itself? How will the system actually run across the year? You select the technologies and provide the data; the tool finds the optimal answer.
Designed for experts and decision-makers alike. Whether you are an energy engineer running detailed scenarios or a municipal manager weighing a strategic investment, the DST presents results you can act on. Behind an intuitive graphical interface, it delivers a complete techno-economic picture: optimal component sizes, investment (CAPEX) and operating (OPEX) costs, and the financial indicators that drive real decisions — payback period, Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), Return on Investment (ROI), and the levelized cost of electricity and hydrogen (LCOE, LCOH). Each result comes with guidance on how to interpret it.
What you can do with it:
- Size and cost a whole system at once — electrolysers, fuel cells, solar PV, wind, batteries, hydrogen and oxygen storage, heat recovery, and water supply, all optimised together rather than piece by piec
- Connect across networks — model how your hub interacts with the electricity, gas, heating, and water grids, including hydrogen and oxygen sales.
- Work from your own starting point — keep existing infrastructure and let the tool optimise only the expansion, or plan a project from scratch.
- Stay within real limits — set a maximum investment budget or an acceptable payback period, and the tool respects those constraints.
- Compare scenarios — test different technology mixes, cost assumptions, or policy conditions side by side to find the most robust plan.
- Track sustainability — distinguish green from non-green electricity and hydrogen, supporting climate targets and green-hydrogen certification.
Why it’s trustworthy? The DST is built on the proven track record of optimisation tools developed at the Laboratory for Renewable Energy Systems (LARES). Once a scenario is optimised it locks automatically, so your results stay reliable and reproducible. Completed analyses can be exported and shared in reports and proposals.
The DST is developed and maintained by the University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (Laboratory for Renewable Energy Systems), within the EU-funded HyEfRe project (ERDF, grant CE0200523).
Download the HyEfRe DST and start planning your hydrogen hub today. Visit the DST website for the download link and resources – video tutorial and user manual. Questions, feedback, or feature requests? Contact the development team at the address listed in the user manual.