Solar Hydrogen Fueling Station

• First one in the world - in Sweden? - [1]
• Techno-economic analysis states that cost of production of solar hydrogen is $9/kg - [2]

Calculations

• 36 cent/kW panel costs at sunelec.com
• Use bus wire, 4-0, at $1/ft - for a few hundred dollar distribution cost to homes, using local 480 DC to 120 AC/240 AC inverters
• Keeps cost down to about $5k for 10kW, though real cost in Seed Eco-Home 1 was $1/W installed (much lower than $3 industry standard)
• Cost of electricity - 20 years * 365 * 6 * 10kW = 438MW hrs for $5k is 1.1 cents/kWhr. And life will be about 2x this for PV panels.
• Given 50 kWhr requirement for hydrogen generation, with 60% efficiency electrolyzer. See Hydrogen Production
  • We get 55 cents per kg hydrogen! That assumes cost of electrolyzer is nil.
• Missing link here is power electronics - so this is what needs to be done from an STTR grant.

Hint: Highlight: Cost of electrolyzer is 50 cents per kg H2 [3]. If we believe this figure, then the distributed production route yields 1/3 the cost (55 cents vs $1.6), adding 17 cents to the 55 cent OSE electricity cost of hydrogen. The OSE cost of hydrogen production is thus 72 cents per kg, not counting compression/storage. With compression, it is 2/3 more - or a total of $1.2 per kg.

Filling Station Calculatons

• Take one acre. 720 kW of panels. 6 hours per day equal 4300 kW hrs.
• This is 86 kg of hydrogen per day, or about 10 microcars per day. Fleet of 70 cars all together. Somewhat marginal.
• But it's still $250/day - or $7500 per month, or $94k/yr. This is ok. Payback time of about 4 years for the PV panels, and overall 7 years. Wow. This would change history.

Links

• Solar Hydrogen Production