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The role of analysis in NREL's hydrogen and fuel cell research is to ensure that federal R&D investments in hydrogen production, storage, distribution, and end-use technologies will provide the maximum value added to the national strategic goal of transitioning to a hydrogen economy. Integrated system analyses, technoeconomic analyses, life cycle assessments (LCAs), vehicle and stationary system analysis, hybrid power systems analysis, resource analysis and market analysis are essential to our research and development efforts. They provide an understanding of the economic, technical, and even global impacts of renewable technologies. These analyses also provide direction, focus, and support to the development and commercialization of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. NREL's Energy Analysis Office integrates and supports the energy analysis functions located in many of the laboratory's research programs and technology centers.
Technoeconomic Analysis
Technoeconomic analyses (TEAs) are performed to determine the potential economic viability of a research process. Evaluating the costs of a given process compared to the current technology can determine the economic feasibility of a project. These analyses can be useful in identifying the emerging technologies with the highest potential for near-, mid-, and long-term success. The results of a TEA are also useful in directing research toward areas in which improvements will result in the greatest cost reductions. As the economics of a process are evaluated throughout the life of the project, advancement toward the final goal of commercialization can be measured. Representative publications from this work are available as Adobe Acrobat PDFs (Download Adobe Reader) including:
- The Summary of Electrolytic Hydrogen Production (PDF 736 KB) provides a technical and economic overview of the electrolytic hydrogen production systems commercially available as of December 2003.
- The Updated Cost Analysis of Photobiological Hydrogen Production from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Green Algae (PDF 678 KB) investigates the impact of cell density, light adsorption and light saturation on the economics of photobiological hydrogen production from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.
- The Survey of the Economics of Hydrogen Technologies (PDF 1.1 MB) contains a survey of more than 100 publications about the economics of current and near-term hydrogen technologies, standardized to a consistent economic basis.
- Hydrogen Storage Costs of Storing and Transporting Hydrogen (PDF 1.3 MB) is the analysis of capital and operating costs for various storage and transportation methods of hydrogen.
Additional TEA publications can be found in the NREL Analysis Documents Database.
Life Cycle Assessment
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an analytic method for identifying, evaluating, and minimizing the environmental impacts of emissions and resource depletion associated with a specific process. When such an assessment is performed in conjunction with a technoeconomic feasibility study, the total economic and environmental benefits and drawbacks of a process can be quantified. Material and energy balances are used to quantify the emissions, resource depletion, and energy consumption of all processes, including extraction and processing of raw materials, and final disposal of products and by-products, required to make the process of interest operate. The results of this inventory are then used to evaluate the environmental impacts of the process so efforts can focus on mitigation. To date, LCA studies have been conducted on the natural gas-to-hydrogen production process and the wind/electrolysis hydrogen production system. These LCA reports are available as Adobe Acrobat PDFs. Download Adobe Reader.
- Life Cycle Assessment of Hydrogen Production via Natural Gas Steam Reforming (PDF 634 KB) summarizes the net emissions of greenhouse gases, as well as other major environmental consequences of producing hydrogen from natural gas.
- Life Cycle Assessment of Renewable Hydrogen Production via Wind/Electrolysis (PDF 1.17 MB) summarizes the cradle-to-grave emissions, resource consumption, and energy of a renewable hydrogen production process which employs wind/electrolysis.
Vehicle Systems Analysis: ADVISOR (ADvanced VehIcle SimulatOR)
In the automotive industry, accurate component and vehicle simulation is important for making intelligent choices about efficient energy management strategies. Simulating vehicle and component performance will help increase the life of the vehicle components, improve vehicle performance, optimize vehicle system designs, and reduce development times. Simulation modeling is critical to rapid and efficient advanced vehicle development.
NREL has worked closely with industry to develop a sophisticated systems analysis tool capable of addressing multiple questions about specific component and vehicle designs. ADVISOR is a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) simulation model written in a widely used software environment called MATLAB/Simulink. This tool tests the impact of changes in vehicle components, such as catalytic converters, climate control systems, alternative fuels or other modifications that might impact fuel economy or emissions. The user can alter simulation results by selecting vehicle component types, sizes and parameters. To use ADVISOR, visit NREL's Center for Transportation Technologies and Systems ADVISOR Web site.
Hybrid Power Systems Analysis: HOMER
HOMER is a computer model that simulates and optimizes hybrid power systems. The model can evaluate design options for both off-grid and grid-connected power systems for remote, stand-alone, cogeneration, and other distributed generation applications. These systems can employ electrolyzers, reformers, hydrogen storage, and fuel cells in addition to combinations of wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, batteries, or conventional generators. Learn more about HOMER.
Resource Analysis
Resource analysis determines the quantity and location of resources needed to produce hydrogen. Additionally, resource analysis quantifies the cost of the resources, as a function of the amount that can be available for hydrogen production. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) modeling is used to portray and analyze resource data. GIS can also represent the spatial relationship between resources, production facilities, infrastructures for transportation and stationary applications, and hydrogen demand centers. NREL's Geographic Information System website provides dynamically generated maps of renewable energy resources, including hydrogen, that determine which energy technologies are viable solutions in the United States.
Market Analysis: WinDS-H2 model
Analyzing the market potential for hydrogen production from wind is complicated due to both wind and hydrogen intricacies. The market potential of hydrogen from wind depends on wind issues—wind resources, transmission access, and integration of the intermittent generation into the electric grid—as well as the complexities of hydrogen production, storage and transport and competition with other sources of hydrogen.
To address these complexities, NREL has modified its WinDS model to include hydrogen. The basic WinDS model is a multi-regional, multi-time-period, Geographic Information System (GIS) and linear programming model, which was developed to simulate the capacity expansion of the electric sector and assess the market potential of U.S. wind resources. The new WinDS-H2 model contains all the features of WinDS, and also includes hydrogen production, storage, and transport technologies. Three competing technologies that can supply hydrogen—electrolyzers at the wind site, steam methane reforming (SMR) of natural gas, and distributed electrolyzers (DE) powered by electricity from the grid (i.e. not necessarily from wind)—are included in the WinDS-H2 model.
H2A Analysis
H2A, which stands for Hydrogen Analysis, was initiated to better leverage the combined talents and capabilities of analysts working on hydrogen systems, and to establish a consistent set of financial parameters and methodology for analyses. The development of H2A was based on the need to improve the transparency and consistency of the analysis approach, to improve the understanding of the differences among publicly available analyses, and to seek better validation of such analyses through dialog with industry.
The H2A Analysis models fall into two categories: H2A Production and H2A Delivery. The H2A Production models enable the users to perform economic analysis of forecourt (distributed) and central hydrogen production systems using various energy resources, including renewables, coal, natural gas, and biomass. In coordination with industry participants, a set of economic assumptions/approaches were implemented in the H2A methodology to facilitate consistent and comparable analyses of hydrogen production and delivery technologies. A number of current timeframe case studies were developed using the H2A Production analysis model and can be downloaded from the H2A Production site. Users of the H2A models can develop hydrogen production case studies beginning with a blank model or alter the assumptions to meet their analysis needs.
The H2A Delivery model, also called the H2A Components model, is designed so that the user can rapidly calculate the delivered cost of hydrogen for a particular delivery component. At this stage, the model only performs cost analysis for components included in a delivery infrastructure based on compressed hydrogen gas or liquid hydrogen. Examples of components included in the model include a compressor, a compressed gas refueling station, a liquefier, a liquid hydrogen refueling station, and a geologic storage system. The tabs included in this Excel based model are key inputs to the Hydrogen Delivery Scenario Analysis Model (HDSAM) which is based at Argonne National Laboratory. HDSAM can be used to determine the delivered cost of hydrogen for a variety of compressed hydrogen gas and liquid hydrogen delivery scenarios. These scenarios encompass an entire delivery infrastructure which can be comprised of multiple components.
HyDRA
HyDRA, Hydrogen Demand and Resource Analysis, is being developed as a web-based GIS tool to allow analysts, decision makers, and general users to view, download, and analyze hydrogen demand, resource, and infrastructure data spatially and dynamically.
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