Green Hydrogen Cost Calculator

Capacity factor only affects how many kilograms of hydrogen the electrolyzer produces over its lifetime to spread the capital and operating costs across, not the per-kilogram electricity cost itself, so a plant that only runs 20% of the year still has to recover the exact same equipment cost from far fewer kilograms. That's why pairing an electrolyzer with intermittent, low-cost renewable power is a genuine tradeoff, not a free win — cheap electrons but a thinly-utilized, expensive-to-amortize asset.

It means 70% of the electrical energy put in ends up as usable chemical energy in the hydrogen produced, with the rest lost mostly as heat, and this calculator holds that figure fixed rather than letting you adjust it. Real electrolyzer technologies vary — alkaline systems commonly run somewhat lower and newer PEM or solid oxide designs can run meaningfully higher — so treat this calculator's output as representative rather than an exact match for any specific electrolyzer model.

Generally no — water cost is calculated from roughly 9 liters consumed per kilogram of hydrogen, and even at the higher end of realistic deionized water prices this typically contributes only a small fraction of a cent to a few cents per kilogram, dwarfed by the electricity and capital cost components. It's included for completeness rather than because it's usually a decisive factor in project economics.

Both work the same way mathematically — spreading the fixed capital cost across more total kilograms of lifetime production — so a longer-lived electrolyzer or one that runs more hours per year each independently lowers the CAPEX-per-kilogram figure. The difference is that lifetime is mostly a property of the equipment and stack replacement schedule, while capacity factor is largely a choice about how the plant is powered and operated.