Techno-economic Study of a 100-MW-class Multi-energy Vehicle Charging/Refueling Station: Using 100% Renewable, Liquid Hydrogen, and Superconductor Technologies

Renewable energies such as the wind energy and solar energy generate low-carbon electricity, which can directly charge battery electric vehicles (BEVs). Meanwhile, the surplus electricity can be used to produce the “green hydrogen”, which provides zero-emission hydrogen fuels to those fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). In order to charge/refuel multi-energy vehicles, we propose a novel scheme of hybrid hydrogen/electricity supply using cryogenic and superconducting technologies. In this scheme, the green hydrogen is further liquefied into the high-density and low-pressure liquid hydrogen (LH2) for bulk energy storage and transmission. Taking the advantage of the cryogenic environment of LH2 (20 K), it can also be used as the cryogen to cool down super conducting cables to realize the virtually zero-loss power transmission from 100 % renewable sources to vehicle charging stations. This hybrid LH2/electricity energy pipeline can realize long-distance, large-capacity, and high efficiency clean energy transmission, to fulfil the hybrid energy supply demand for BEVs and FCEVs. For the case of a 100 MW-class hybrid hydrogen/electricity supply station, the system principle and energy management strategy are analyzed through 9 different operating sub-modes. The corresponding static and dynamic economic modeling are performed, and the economic feasibility of the hybrid hydrogen/electricity supply is verified using life-cycle analysis. Taking an example of wind power capacity 1898 MWh and solar power capacity 1619 MWh per day, the dynamic payback period is 15.06 years, the profitability index is 1.17, the internal rate of return is 7.956 %, and the accumulative NPV is 187.92 M$. The system design and techno-economic analysis can potentially offer a technically/economically superior solution for future multi-energy vehicle charging/refueling systems.