Economic assessment of hydrogen fueling station, a case study for Iran

Meysam Qadrdan and Jalal Shayegan

Renewable Energy, 2008, vol. 33, issue 12, 2525-2531

Abstract: In recent years there have been many efforts to develop a hydrogen energy system in Iran. For instance, the Iranian fuel cell steering committee conducted a project and determined some targets to implement hydrogen in different sectors, especially transportation. In this paper, the costs of building stations and the levelized cost of hydrogen for two types of stations, SMR and electrolysis, with various sizes and capacity factors have been investigated. Also, in the case of electrolysis, hydrogen cost sensitivity to the price of electricity has been examined. According to the cost analysis conducted here, it is understandable that hydrogen costs ($/kg) vary considerably based on station type, size, and capacity factor. Hydrogen production from natural gas results in lower costs ($3–7/kg H2) in comparison to electrolysis ($6–10/kg H2). Hydrogen cost would decrease by increasing the capacity factor, but in the case of electrolysis, from a specific capacity factor, hydrogen cost begins to rise; this is due to the trade off between the capacity factor and the price of electricity in various load zones. In general, hydrogen costs in Iran are estimated from 3 to 10.5$/kg, however a strategy for producing even lower cost hydrogen in the early years of hydrogen implementation, is proposed, which all together indicates that hydrogen could be an economical alternative fuel to substitute gasoline in the Iran's transportation sector.

Keywords: Hydrogen; Fueling station; Engineering economic; Electrolysis; Reforming (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148108000700
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:33:y:2008:i:12:p:2525-2531

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2008.02.014

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().