Executive Summary
- The electric charging station charges battery vehicles, moving electrons; a hydrogen refueling station charges hydrogen vehicles by filling a tank with gas.
- The electric charging station takes about 30 minutes to charge 80% of the battery; a hydrogen refueling station charges the tank 100% in 5 minutes. Therefore, the hydrogen station can supply energy to more vehicles in the same period.
- The electric charging station can have different connectors since there is no standard among manufacturers; the hydrogen station only has one standardized connector for gas refueling.
- The electric charging station provides much cheaper energy (€3/100 km) compared to the hydrogen station (€8/100 km).
- Recharging faster and faster at electric charging stations is not a problem right now but may congest networks if the number and power of these stations keep increasing; on the other hand, hydrogen production and supply with the required power for production are decoupled.
About Electric Charging Stations
The electric charging station, or battery car charging point, is a post to which the car is connected. Depending on the type of charge (slow, semi-fast, fast, or ultra-fast), the car charges more or less quickly, but (almost) always, it will take a minimum of 30 minutes for an 80% charge. The charging price is quite economical, around 21 cents per kWh (in public fast or semi-fast chargers), which translates to approximately €3 per 100 km. This would be even less, depending on the tariff contracted with the supplier, if charged at home.
A semi-fast charging point has an installed power of 22 kW, the fast one about 50 kW. The ultra-fast ones can reach 200 kW or even exceed that.*
*For an expert reader, this might be familiar, but for our friend who is neither an electrician nor anything like that, it might sound foreign… To explain it so any reader can understand, these power levels are very high. Consider that in homes, we have power levels of 3-5 kW and that we pay both for what we consume (energy in kWh) and for the availability or accessibility to that energy, which would be the power (in kW).
Power sets the maximum you have instant access to (when we connect many things at once and protections trip, you were probably exceeding the contracted power, and your Power Control Switch, PCS, cuts the “power”). In other words, if electricity were water, the energy would be the water you use, and the power would be the size of the tank your supplier guarantees will always be available, but which you have to pay for whether you use it or not.
Going back to electric charging stations, each time a fast charging point is installed, a point where 50 kW can be demanded is being set. If 3 charging points are installed to slightly increase availability, 150 kW is already being set, consuming almost 40 homes’ worth of power. This shows how fast charging points can saturate the electrical grid (through which energy flows from power plants to homes). In contrast, a slow charging point has about 8 kW, something reasonable, about what is installed in a house. The charger costs about €800, and some suppliers install it when contracting “electricity” with them.
Another very interesting solution is solar chargers on parking roofs, which provide shade to cars all day and charge the car while working in the office. Some companies already offer the complete solution.
One issue that needs optimization in these types of cars is the connectors, as there are different models, and there should be a standardized one for all brands, at least in Europe.
Lastly, when talking about batteries with increasing range or that charge faster and faster; from the author’s point of view, this is a double-edged sword because, unfortunately, it must involve increasingly powerful charging stations. This is because: Energy (kWh) = Power (kW) x Time (h). If the battery has more range (more energy) and materials allow it to be filled in less time, then it must be done at higher power, more installed power, more congested networks.
This doesn’t mean that fast chargers shouldn’t be installed, but rather that their locations and the extent to which they are worthwhile should be carefully considered. As a suggestion to the industry, could something similar to butane bottles with batteries be done? Pick up a full one and drop off an empty one? It would be 5 minutes at the electric charging station.
About Hydrogen Refueling Stations
This service station fills gas, not electrons, so the electrical installation needed is not as large as that of an electric charging station with fast chargers, as long as the hydrogen station does not produce hydrogen on-site through electrolysis. The car charges in 5 minutes and has a range of over 600 km (specifically, 666 km for the *Hyundai Nexo).
*To read more about hydrogen cars, I recommend the websites of the two mass-produced models:
- Hyundai Nexo (link here).
- Toyota Mirai (link here).
There are many possible configurations for hydrogen refueling stations, but they can be divided into two main groups and subgroups. On one hand, there are those that produce hydrogen on-site, which have high electrical consumption* because they have an electrolyzer (a machine that generates hydrogen and oxygen by breaking the water molecule), but they do not have transportation costs. On the other hand, there are hydrogen refueling stations that bring compressed gas hydrogen from a centralized production site (in other countries like Japan or the US, hydrogen is also often transported in liquid form).
*An electrolyzer of 1 MWe can generate enough hydrogen for more than 100 cars per day.
If we talk about those that receive supply in gaseous form, they only have two electrical consumptions: the compressor that maintains the refueling pressure and the cooler that cools the hydrogen before filling to ensure fast supply. This can mean a single installation of 50 kW for a hydrogen refueling station with a single nozzle where a car can be refueled 100% every 5 minutes. Additionally, the nozzle is standard; there is a single type of connector for all car brands. Filling a hydrogen car currently costs around €8 per 100 km, similar to the cost with diesel. This assumes a gas price of €10/kg, but that price is high, and it is already possible to produce renewable hydrogen (without CO2 emissions or other pollutants) for less than half.
Now, infrastructure for hydrogen refueling stations needs to be created to make it worthwhile to undertake renewable hydrogen production projects to supply the cars when the network is extensive. There is still a long way to go with hydrogen; the technology cannot yet be judged when it has much room for improvement. It is true that cars are expensive, and 95% of the hydrogen produced worldwide comes from fossil sources, but that is a starting point, not an endpoint.
Conclusion
If you have a garage (and can install a domestic charging point) and/or the company has chargers in the parking lot, and, importantly, you travel 10/20 km to the office almost every day, the ideal vehicle is the battery one, without a doubt. It’s simple and cheap (and does not emit gases in the city, a benefit shared by both technologies, hydrogen and battery).
However, if you have intensive activity, many hours a day, many kilometers, time is money (literally), then it is worth waiting for the hydrogen car (it won’t take long). Without a doubt, the hydrogen car will be the car for long trips and intensive use, and this is how the two technologies will find their place and complement each other to definitively replace fossil fuel cars.
In future posts, we will continue to delve into the world of hydrogen, hydrogen refueling stations, cars, production technologies, and much more. Any questions, leave us a comment or write to us at the information email: info@leanhydrogen.whdev.es.
