Techno-Economic Optimization of Electrified Airports as Collaborative Energy Hubs

The electrification of regional aviation requires coordinated planning of airport energy systems that integrate renewable generation, energy storage, and hydrogen technologies in a cost-efficient and resilient manner. This paper presents a scalable techno-economic optimization framework that models multiple airports as collaborative energy hubs. An object-oriented mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulation is combined with a genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize infrastructure sizing and energy dispatch. The framework is applied to three Swedish regional airports—Västerås, Jönköping, and Visby. A set of scenarios, including parties operating under shared wind-energy contracts using power purchase agreements (PPAs) and dynamic pricing (DP), was studied. Detailed representations of battery energy storage, hydrogen production and storage, and market interactions are included. Results show that coordinated operation and airport collaboration under a smart energy management system can reduce total annual cost by up to 5% while enhancing operational flexibility and resilience to demand peaks and grid disturbances.