Off-grid solar powered charging station for electric and hydrogen vehicles including fuel cell and hydrogen storage

Abstract

Abstract This paper designs an off-grid charging station for electric and hydrogen vehicles. Both the electric and hydrogen vehicles are charged at the same time. They appear as two electrical and hydrogen load demand on the charging station and the charging station is powered by solar panels. The output power of solar system is separated into two parts. On part of solar power is used to supply the electrical load demand (to charge the electric vehicles) and rest runs water electrolyzer and it will be converted to the hydrogen. The hydrogen is stored and it supplies the hydrogen load demand (to charge the hydrogen-burning vehicles). The uncertainty of parameters (solar energy, consumed power by electrical vehicles, and consumed power by hydrogen vehicles) is included and modeled. The fuel cell is added to the charging station to deal with such uncertainty. The fuel cell runs on hydrogen and produces electrical energy to supply electrical loading under uncertainties. The diesel generator is also added to the charging station as a supplementary generation. The problem is modeled as stochastic optimization programming and minimizes the investment and operational costs of solar and diesel systems. The introduced planning finds optimal rated powers of solar system and diesel generator, operation pattern for diesel generator and fuel cell, and the stored hydrogen. The results confirm that the cost of changing station is covered by investment cost of solar system (95%), operational cost of diesel generator (4.5%), and investment cost of diesel generator (0.5%). The fuel cell and diesel generator supply the load demand when the solar energy is zero. About 97% of solar energy will be converted to hydrogen and stored. The optimal operation of diesel generator reduces the cost approximately 15%.