In a recent publication, the Hydrogen Council states that scaling up to greater production volumes leads to significant cost savings as a consequence of the industrialization of equipment manufacturing, increased utilization, standardization, and improvements in system efficiency and flexibility. In this study, a component-oriented techno-economic model is applied to five different European hydrogen refueling stations within the 3Emotion project, which is planned to ensure capacities sufficient for increasing a fleet to 100 fuel cell buses. The investigation of the various cases shows that the levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) for large-scale applications will be in the range of about 4 €/kg to 7 €/kg within the boundaries analyzed. On-site production facilities were found to be the lower-cost design, benefiting from the high volumes at stake and the economy of scale with respect to decentralized production due to the significant costs associated with retail hydrogen and transport. This study also illustrates the effects on the LCOH of varying the hydrogen delivery and production prices using a sensitivity analysis. The results show that, by utilizing high-capacity trailers, the costs associated with delivery could be reduced by 30%. Furthermore, green hydrogen production could be a competitive solution if coupled with low electricity prices, resulting in an LCOH between 4.21 €/kg and 6.80 €/kg.

Hydrogen Refueling Stations (HRS) are a key infrastructure to the successful deployment of hydrogen mobility. Their cost-effectiveness will represent an increasingly crucial issue considering the foreseen growth of vehicle fleets, from few captive fleets to large-scale penetration of hydrogen vehicles. In this context a detailed, component-oriented cost model is important to assess HRS costs for different design concepts, layout schemes and possible customizations, respect to aggregate tools which are mostly available in literature. In this work an improved version of a previously developed component-oriented, scale-sensitive HRS cost model is applied to 5 different European HRS developed within the 3Emotion project with different refueling capacities (kg_H2/day), hydrogen supply schemes (in-situ production or delivery), storage volumes and pressures and operational strategies. The model output allows to assess the upfront investment cost (CAPEX), the annual operational cost (OPEX) and the Levelized Cost of Hydrogen (LCOH) at the dispenser and identify the most crucial cost components. The results for the five analyzed HRS sites show an LCOH at the nozzle of around 8-9 €/kg for delivery based HRSs, which are mainly dominated by the H₂ retail price and transport service price and around 11-12 €/kg for on-site producing HRS, for which the electrolyzer CAPEX and electricity price plays a key role in the cost structure. The compression, storage, and dispensing sections account for between 1-3 €/kg according to the specific design & performance requirements of the HRS. The total LCOH values are comparable with literature, standard market prices for similar scale HRSs and with the 3Emotion project targets.

Among the various renewable-powered pathways for green hydrogen production, solar photovoltaic (PV) technology represents a particularly promising option due to its environmental sustainability, widespread availability, and declining costs. However, the inherent intermittency of solar irradiance presents operational challenges for electrolyzers, particularly in terms of stability and efficiency. This study presents a MATLAB-based dynamic model of an off-grid, DC-coupled solar PV-Anion Exchange Membrane (AEM) electrolyzer system, with a specific focus on realistically estimating hydrogen output. The model incorporates thermal energy management strategies, including electrolyte pre-heating during startup, and accounts for performance degradation due to load cycling. The model is designed for a comprehensive analysis of hydrogen production by employing a 10-year time series of irradiance and ambient temperature profiles as inputs. The results are compared with two simplified scenarios: one that does not consider the equipment response time to variable supply and another that assumes a fixed start temperature to evaluate their impact on productivity. Furthermore, to limit the effects of degradation, the algorithm has been modified to allow the non-sequential activation of the stacks, resulting in an improvement of the single stack efficiency over the lifetime and a slight increase in overall hydrogen production.