Integrated Co‐Optimisation of Energy–Water–Hydrogen Systems for Carbon‐Aware Dispatch Under Uncertainty

ABSTRACT

Modern energy–water infrastructures face practical dispatch challenges, such as electricity demand, water production and treatment, renewable intermittency, hydrogen conversion and carbon‐emission limits, which are strongly coupled, yet they are commonly scheduled through separate models. This separation can increase fossil generation, renewable curtailment, water‐supply stress and operating cost, thereby making carbon‐aware operation difficult for interdependent networked systems. The research gap is that most existing studies address energy–water, electricity–hydrogen, or storage coordination separately, whereas few formulations combine power, water, hydrogen conversion, carbon pricing, curtailment, and ramping decisions in a single operational model. The present work develops an integrated optimisation framework for multi‐vector energy networks to specifically address these coupled operational challenges. Unlike conventional approaches that treat these networks independently, the proposed framework integrates power generation, water production and treatment, hydrogen production and fuel‐cell discharge within a single nonlinear programme. The main innovation is a unified carbon‐aware NLP dispatch formulation that links aggregate power and water balances with electrolysis, fuel‐cell operation, hydrogen storage, renewable utilisation, feasibility‐relaxation penalties and inter‐temporal ramping constraints. The solved model uses aggregate hourly power and water balances on an IEEE 30‐bus test case coupled to an Anytown‐style 24‐node water layer, quadratic generation costs, linear hydrogen conversion, scalar renewable and fuel‐cell injections, optional slack penalties, and ramp limits on fossil, cogeneration, and fuel‐cell outputs. The problem is implemented in the General Algebraic Modelling System and solved with IPOPT. Monte Carlo analysis with scenarios assesses cost and variability. Relative to the without‐hydrogen benchmark used in the results section, hydrogen integration yields about 2.8% lower operating cost, 3.7% lower emissions, 3.8% lower fossil MWh, and 17.6% higher renewable utilisation, illustrating practical viability for integrated energy–water‐hydrogen planning.