Optimal operation of a Hydrogen Refueling Station

(HRS)
Berrío Castro, Ever Javier
Grupo de Automática
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Medellín, Colombia
ejberrio@unal.edu.co

Abstract—Fuel cell vehicles are growing in the global market. at the same time, an increase of CO2 emissions, and an increase
Due to this, an efficient solution is necessary to manage demand. of the price, because the electricity from the grid has a cost.
Hydrogen refueling stations (HRS) are a good solution because the
vehicles in the cities are dispersed. This paper shows the optimal An optimization between these three objective functions should
operation of a photovoltaic generation-powered electrolysis be made for optimal operation.
hydrogen production system at a hydrogen refueling station,
taking account three objectives functions, reduction of CO2
emissions, increase of electrolysis system utilizations and minimize II. SYSTEM STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONS
the cost of operations, taking into account that an external
reformed hydrogen is purchased and electricity from the power A. System diagram.
grid is used [1].
Figure 1 shows the diagram of the system to be
Keywords—Hydrogen economy, photovoltaic, Electrolysis modelated. The model consist of an EL-system,
system, HRS. Photovoltaic system, power grid, and HRS. The EL-system
is based in a PEM-EL that use a solid polymer membrane
I. INTRODUCTION electrolyte. A battery is consider for only compensate short
The market penetration of fuel cell vehicles in many term fluctuation in PV, but it is not included in the model.
countries has increased the hydrogen demand. To supply this
demand, hydrogen refueling stations (HRS) should increase, and
optimizations strategies are needed to decrease the final price of
hydrogen[1]. The main reason for using Fuel cell vehicles
(FCVs) is CO2 mitigations, even if hydrogen is obtained from
hydrocarbons materials, because the efficiency of FCVs is
higher than internal combustions vehicles. If hydrogen is
obtained by renewable energy sources (RES) like photovoltaic-
power, the mitigation of CO2 is higher.
An operating HRS, in which a photovoltaic-power (PV) and
an electrolysis system (EL-System) are used to supply the
electricity and hydrogen demand respectively, is analyzed in this
paper. Three objective functions are constructed for
optimizations: 1) Reduction of CO2 emissions, 2) increase of
Electrolysis system utilization and 3) minimize the cost of
operations. A tradeoff between these objectives should exist,
due to the next reasons:
Reducing the CO2 emissions require only the use of Figure 1. System diagram of a low-carbon hydrogen
electricity from the photovoltaic-power, but it implies a production system for a hydrogen refueling station.
reduction of EL-system utilization.
An initial investment cost for the electrolysis system
constructions was accomplished, so maximize the use of the EL-
system reduces the price of the hydrogen. Maximize the use of
B. System parameters
EL-system implies the use or electricity from the power grid, but

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 TABLE I. PARAMETERS AND CONSTANTS. nt

Item Value Unit max H EL   H EL (t ) (3)


t 1
IE 0.525 Kg-CO2/kWh
IH Kg-CO2/Nm3 ((1  eb ).EEL (t).el F1
1.13 H EL (t )  . (4)
PH 31.38 JPY/Nm 3 T F2
F1 3.6 MJ/kWh min COST (5)
3 GRIDEAC , H 2H
F2 12.7 MJ/Nm
nt
T 1 hour
COST   ((Gac (t ) / T)*pE (t )  Hb (t )* pH ) (6)
t 1

TABLE II. EQUIPMENT CHARACTERISTICS. Electricity from power grid has the following restrictions:
Item Value Unit Gdc (t )  pv(t )  EEL (t )  SEd (t ) (8)
EEL max 100.0 kW
Gdc (t )  Gac *ad (9)
EEL min 20.0 kW
eb 10.0 % Gac (t )  0 (10)
 el 67.0 % The electricity consumed by the EL-system is given by:
H st max 9000 Nm3
T.Hel (t) F2
H st min 100 Nm3 EEL (t )  . (11)
el (1  eb ) F1
ad 95.0 %
The hydrogen storage is given by:
Hb max 600 Nm3
pvmax 150 kW H st (t )  H st (t  1)  H EL (t )  H dem (t ) (12)

H st min H st (t )  H st max (13)

TABLE III. ELECTRICITY PRICE AND DEMANDS
H b (t )  H b max (14)

From (10) we can get that:

F1
H el (t )  ( pv(t )  Sed (t )).T .el . (15)
F2
D. Optimizations scenario

In order to investigate optimal operations strategies, two

objective functions were conducted. Minimize CO2 emissions
(1), and maximization capacity utilizations of EL-system (2).
Maximization of capacity utilization implies a decrease of retail
price of hydrogen.
The EL-System efficiency was taken from a commercial small
electrolyzer (Enoah EHC-500). [1].
E. Scenario A: ; minimization of CO2 emisions. No restriction
(10). Energy from PV can be sold to the power Grid.
C. Formulation of the problem
Minimize equation (1). The time step T is 1 hour and the
The system to be optimized is modeled by the following
total calculation time is 1 week, or 7 days.
equations:
The cost functions are: For this scenario we first resolve the problem without binary
variables, assuming that the EL-System work only in normal
min CO2 (1) state, that is:
Gac , H 2

nt
CO2   ((G ac (t ) / T)*I E  Hb (t )*I H
Hel (t ) F
(2) Eel (t )  .T . 2 (15)
t 1 el (1  eb ) F1
 Replacing (8), (9) and (15) in equation (1), we get the Total CO2 emissions was 24000.7 kg.
function cost:

nt F. Senario A1: minimization of CO2 emisions. Applying

min 1.13Hb (t )  2.6453H el (t )  0.5526SEd (t )  0.5526 pv(t ) restriction (10).
Hb , Hel
t 1
(16) Energy from PV cannot be sold to the power Grid. Under
this scenario we get the followings results:
Minimizing (16) we get the next results for bought hydrogen
and hydrogen produced by the EL System:

Figure 5. Hel(t) Scenario A1.

Figure 2. Hydrogen generated by El-system, Scenario A. Total hydrogen produced by El-System in the week was
854.7 Nm3.
From figure (2) we have that Total hydrogen produced by
El-System in the week was 701.95 Nm3.

Figure 6. Hydrogen behavior on HRS, scenario A1.

Figure 3. Hydrogen behavior on HRS, scenario A. Total bought hydrogen from off-site was 20192.4 Nm3

Total purchased hydrogen from off-site was 20344.8 Nm3. Total CO2 emissions was 24139.2 kg.

Under this scenario, when we can sell energy, according to Due to the energy cannot be sell to the power Grid, the
minimizing the function cost (16), the exceeding energy from exceeding energy from panel is use by the El-system.
PV will be sell to the power Grid, because we assume that the
emission factor F1 is the same for selling energy. Selling energy
to power Grid will cause a discount of CO2 emissions.

Figure 7. Electricity behavior on HRS, scenario A1.

Figure 4. Electricity behavior on HRS, scenario A.

G. Scenario A2. minimization of CO2 emisions. Aditional H. Scenario B. Maximization of use of the El-system.
restriction (17) Equation (2).
Maximize (2) is equivalent to minimize (18).
An additional constrain is applied (17), all the energy
generated by the panels must be used by de EL-System. That is nt
because we want to increase the use of the EL-system. min   H EL (t ) (18)
H EL
t 1
Eel (t )  pv(t ) (17)
The resulting operation by optimizing (18) is shown in
figure 11 – 14.
The resulting operation by optimizing (1) is shown in figure
8 – 10.

Figure 11. Hydrogen generated by El-system, Scenario B.

Figure 8. Hydrogen generated by El-system, Scenario A2.

Figure 12. Hydrogen storage Scenario B

Figure 9. Hydrogen behavior on HRS, scenario A2.

Figure 13. Hydrogen behavior on HRS, scenario B.

Figure 10. Electricity behavior on HRS, scenario A.

In figure 10 we can see that all pv electricity is used by the

El-system, and the demand of the station is supplied by the
power Grid.
 generation-powered hydrogen production system at a
hydrogen refueling station,” Int. J. Hydrogen Energy,
vol. 43, no. 32, pp. 14892–14904, 2018.

Figure 14. Electricity behavior on HRS, scenario B.

I. Scenario C. Minimazing the COST, equation (6).

The results are similar to optimizing equation (1), as we can
see in figure 15.

Figure 14. Electricity behavior on HRS, scenario C.

III. CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSIONS

We can analyze that all scenarios, except B, do not use all

the capacity of the storage tank, so, we can decide that the
storage tank can be reduced.
For All scenarios indicate that an increase of the capacity of
generation of photovoltaic energy results even in an increase of
the utilization of the El-system, as much as a reduction on the
CO2 emissions and a reduction on the cost of the operation.
If the station was in the capacity to sell energy to the power
Grid, under the actual conditions, the operation may be more
efficient, due to the possibility to implements more operations
to increase the profit of the station.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
To professor Jairo Espinosa and GAUNAL members group
for the support.

REFERENCES

[1] H. Aki, I. Sugimoto, T. Sugai, M. Toda, M. Kobayashi,

and M. Ishida, “Optimal operation of a photovoltaic