Land Suitability and Techno-Economic Assessment of PV–Wind Hydrogen Production in Morocco with Salt-Cavern Storage Integration

Amrani, Salah-Eddine;Ouchani, Fatima-Zahra;Kchaou, Mahdi;Coppitters, Diederik;Alami Merrouni, Ahmed;et.al.
(2026) International Journal of Hydrogen Energy — Vol. 291, p. 158507 (2026)

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Abstract
This study aims to identify the most suitable locations in Morocco for PV-Wind powered hydrogen production, incorporating salt-cavern storage as a key selection criterion. To achieve this, we integrated the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with a Geographic Information System (GIS) to develop a high-resolution suitability atlas. From this atlas, areas classified as “highly suitable” were extracted; three selected high-ranking hotspots were selected for techno-economic evaluation. Hydrogen production volumes and levelized costs (LCOH2) were assessed under two scenarios: (i) without storage and (ii) with salt-cavern storage. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to evaluate the impact of varying storage shares on the LCOH2. The results demonstrate that Morocco holds significant potential for hosting PV-Wind hybrid hydrogen production systems with integrated salt-cavern storage as the highly suitable areas account for 30.4% of the national territory. Among the three top-ranked sites, the leading site achieves a peak hydrogen production of 264 kg/MWe/day, with an average output of 160 kg/MWe/day. At this location, LCOH2 is estimated at 3.7 $/kg without storage, increasing to 6.7 $/kg when 100% of the produced hydrogen is stored. We believe that these findings are of great interest as they provide a robust geospatial and economic foundation to guide the strategic development of large-scale green hydrogen infrastructure in Morocco, a focusing country in the energy market.
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Amrani, S.-E., Ouchani, F.-Z., Kchaou, M., Coppitters, D., Contino, F., & Alami Merrouni, A. (2026). Land Suitability and Techno-Economic Assessment of PV–Wind Hydrogen Production in Morocco with Salt-Cavern Storage Integration. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 291, 158507. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2026.158507 (Original work published 2026)