Techno-Economic Model for Scaling Up of Hydrogen Refueling Stations

In a recent publication, the Hydrogen Council states that scaling up to greater production volumes leads to significant cost savings as a consequence of the industrialization of equipment manufacturing, increased utilization, standardization, and improvements in system efficiency and flexibility. In this study, a component-oriented techno-economic model is applied to five different European hydrogen refueling stations within the 3Emotion project, which is planned to ensure capacities sufficient for increasing a fleet to 100 fuel cell buses. The investigation of the various cases shows that the levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) for large-scale applications will be in the range of about 4 €/kg to 7 €/kg within the boundaries analyzed. On-site production facilities were found to be the lower-cost design, benefiting from the high volumes at stake and the economy of scale with respect to decentralized production due to the significant costs associated with retail hydrogen and transport. This study also illustrates the effects on the LCOH of varying the hydrogen delivery and production prices using a sensitivity analysis. The results show that, by utilizing high-capacity trailers, the costs associated with delivery could be reduced by 30%. Furthermore, green hydrogen production could be a competitive solution if coupled with low electricity prices, resulting in an LCOH between 4.21 €/kg and 6.80 €/kg.