Hydrogen Fuel Cell Bus Technology State of the ... - NEXTHYLIGHTS

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Hydrogen Fuel Cell Bus Technology State of the Art Review €500,000 (for large orders) and an upper bound o €950,000 between 2015 and 2018. This will require: o Next generation of fuel cell systems, with lower component costs and simpler manufacturing processes (expected to be launched 2013-2014) o the market experiencing standardisation in the hybrid manufacturing process, reducing labour costs and overheads for bus manufacturers o An increase in fuel cell bus sales (of the order of low 100s in the period 2012-2015), which leads to economies of scale for buses and fuel cells and helps reduce some of the risk premium applied to FC buses by bus builders On a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) basis, these buses are not expected to compete with diesel bus technologies by 2015/18. They may, however, be able to gain some market traction on environmentally sensitive routes which would typically be serviced by trolley buses. It is therefore likely that subsidies will be also required beyond 2015/18 to support further increases in the size of the FC bus market. Beyond 2015, there are two paths being considered for further fuel cell bus cost reduction, which differ according to their approach to the fuel cell stack. In the first, volume sales for fuel cell passenger cars (from 2015 onwards) are expected to drive the costs of automotive stacks down to very low levels (low €100‟s of euros per kW for a fuel cell bus system based on a passenger car stack). These very low cost stacks can then be used in buses and offer low total costs of ownership, despite the relatively short lifetimes (automotive stacks are designed for only 5,000 hour life). Buses using passenger car based stacks have the potential to reduce costs well below €400,000 by 2022/25. The alternative approach is to continue to develop longer life fuel cell systems dedicated to the bus market. Here higher stack costs are offset by longer lifetimes. The development of these lower cost stacks is believed to require bus volumes in the 1,000‟s in the 2015 to 2020 period. Again there is potential to reduce overall bus costs to an affordable level by 2022/25. Concluding, Hydrogen bus technology is expected to provide a more flexible and cost effective solution (on a total cost of ownership basis) than trolley buses for new routes in the period between 2015 and 2020, whilst it is expected to converge towards diesel-fuelled bus total ownership cost levels by approx. 2025/30. At this point the economics will be dictated by the relative cost of diesel versus hydrogen. Fuelling hydrogen buses allows very large refuelling facilities to be deployed, potentially with very long contract life. For a bus depot requiring 1,000kg/day, with a guaranteed requirement for over 10 years, the untaxed hydrogen costs at the pump (e.g. all-inclusive) could fall below €5 - 4/kg. When improved fuel economies for fuel 74
Hydrogen Fuel Cell Bus Technology State of the Art Review cell buses are included, this can lead to approximately equivalent fuel costs to diesel buses on an untaxed basis. This suggests that provided sufficient confidence is obtained in the FC buses and costs are reduced, infrastructure need not be a major barrier to increased FC bus rollout. Most of the refuelling stations for bus applications are currently based on trucked-in gaseous or liquid hydrogen, as centralized hydrogen production proved to be generally more cost effective than on-site technologies, particularly for the higher daily demands which characterize bus operation (compared with passenger cars). On-site production from electrolysis has tended to occur only where a very high priority is placed on zero carbon hydrogen as, most notably, the on-site route tends to lead to higher cost compared to the delivered hydrogen solutions (e.g. up to two or three times higher). For urban bus depots, there is often limited space for new fuelling equipment. This means station footprint can be an important factor in selecting the fuelling system of choice. Here, new designs are required for large scale fuelling (over 1,000kg/day), which will be compatible with future bus depots based on hydrogen. The refuelling time experienced by fuel cell bus operators range between 7 and 10 minutes per bus, assuming 30 - 40kg of on-board hydrogen storage at 350bar. As typical refuelling times for diesel buses are less than 3 minutes, the longer fill times for hydrogen buses risks causing an unacceptable level of inconvenience for transit operators when dealing with fleets of over 100 buses. This is a challenge for hydrogen buses which needs further work. Solutions could be logistical (e.g. installing additional dispensers at depots to allow simultaneous fuelling of buses), practical (e.g. altering route patterns to allow fuelling during the day), or technical (e.g. pre-cooling hydrogen to allow faster fuelling or operating 700 bar tanks to allow fuelling only every two days). It is recommended that these types of solutions are explored in the near term projects for hydrogen bus demonstration such as the CHIC project. 75
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Hydrogen Fuel Cell Bus Technology State of the ... - NEXTHYLIGHTS

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