An economic analysis of the production of hydrogen from wind-generated electricity for use in transport applications

Abstract

International audienceWind-generated electricity is often considered a particularly promising option for producing hydrogen from renewable energy sources. However, the economic performances of such systems generally remain unclear because of unspecified or favorable assumptions and operating conditions. The aim of this paper is to clarify these conditions by examining how the hydrogen produced is used. The analysis that has been conducted in the framework of the HyFrance 3 project concerns hydrogen for transport applications. Different technical systems are considered such as motorway hydrogen filling stations, Hythane®-fueled buses or second-generation biofuels production, which present contrasted hydrogen use characteristics. This analysis reveals considerable variations in hydrogen production costs depending on the demand profiles concerned, with the most favorable configurations being those in which storage systems are kept to a minimum

Sustainable development of road transportation sector using hydrogen energy system

“…In a study on combined wind power and water electrolysis, Spath and Mann [38] reported that wind can provide hydrogen at the consumer site with few emissions and with very low consumption of fossil resources. The integration of wind-electricity and gird electricity for hydrogen production by electrolysis can maximize the rate of use of electrolyzer [39], but the hydrogen is not 100% renewable (26-50% from wind energy). Hydrogen can also be produced as by-product from the chloroalkaline industries, as shown in Fig.…”

Micro-grid for on-site wind-and-hydrogen powered generation

“…However, the cost analysis (see, e.g. [4,5]) shows that traditional technologies of electrolysis and hydrogen compression are expensive and imply quite a large self-consumption of energy.…”

“…In windy weather the turbine works into load directly, but when the wind-generated power exceeds the load demand the excess power is used for electrolytic production of hydrogen, which is then stored as compressed gas (e.g. in cylinder tanks [2][3][4]5]). When such wind-generated power is unavailable, electricity can be produced by a fuel cell using the stored hydrogen.…”

Hydrogen production with sea water electrolysis using Norwegian offshore wind energy potentials

“…2 http://www.alpha-ventus.de/index.php?id=101; [20] provides 15 min values of real time fed-in offshore wind power and alpha ventus was the only operating farm for the selected time according to [64]. Detailed offshore wind data for Norway was not available.…”