Four years of operational data for five hydrogen refueling stations

¹ CIRPS, Interuniversity Research Center for Sustainable Development, 00152 Rome, Italy
² ENEA, Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, TERIN-PSU-ABI, 00123 Rome, Italy
³ Department of Engineering Science, Guglielmo Marconi University, 00193 Rome, Italy
⁴ Ballard Power Systems, Majsmarken 1, 9500 Hobro, Denmark

^* Corresponding author: author@e-mail.org

Abstract

Worldwide about 550 hydrogen refueling stations (HRS) were in operation in 2021, of which 38%. were in Europe. With their number expected to grow even further, the collection and investigation of real-world station operative data are fundamental to tracking their activity in terms of safety issues, performances, costs, maintenance, reliability, and energy use. This paper shows and analyses the parameters that characterize the refueling of 350 bar fuel cell buses in four HRS within the 3Emotion project. The HRS are characterized by different refueling capacities, hydrogen supply schemes, storage volumes and pressures, and operational strategies. From data logs provided by the operators, a dataset of three years of operation has been created. In particular total hydrogen quantity, the fill amount dispensed to each bus, the refueling duration, the average mass flow rate, the number of refueling events and the daily number of refills, the daily profile, the utilization factor, and the availability are investigated. The results show similar hydrogen amount per fill distribution, but quite different refueling times among the stations. The average daily mass per bus is around 12.95 kg, the most frequent value 15 kg, the standard deviation 7.46. About 50% of the total amount of hydrogen is dispensed overnight and the refueling events per bus are typically every 24 hours. Finally, the station utilization is below 30% for all sites.