Rethinking Hydrogen Fueling

Over the past century gasoline fueling has evolved from being performed by a variety of informal, diverse methods to being performed through the use of a standardized, highly automated system that exploits the fuel's benefits and mitigates its hazards. Any effort to transition to another fuel with different properties-with both advantages and disadvantages-must make similar adjustments. This paper discusses the existing gasoline refueling infrastructure and its evolution. It then describes the hydrogen delivery scenario analysis model, an Excel-based tool that calculates the levelized cost of delivering hydrogen from a central production facility to a vehicle by the use of currently available technologies and a typical profile of vehicle use and fueling demand. The results are shown for a status quo, or gasoline-centric case, in which demand reflects the current gasoline-based system and supply responds accordingly, and a hydrogen-centric case, in which some of those patterns are altered. The paper highlights fueling requirements that are particularly problematic for hydrogen and concludes with a discussion of alternative fueling paradigms.