The effect of the energy interchange dynamics on the zero-energy hydrogen economy of households with FC hybrid electric vehicles

The effect of the energy interchange dynamics on the Zero-Energy Hydrogen Economy (ZEH2E) of households with Fuel-cell Hybrid Electric Vehicles (FCHEV) is investigated in this work. An isolated grid constituted of a household, a battery bank, a PEMFC, a PEM electrolyzer, and PV panels were used as a rig for the study together with an optimal energy management strategy, which guaranteed ≥100% PV self-sufficiency index of the household load and hydrogen harvesting for electrical transportation. Global horizontal irradiance and temperature data, measured every 10 min for 365 days in three different locations of Mexico and Hardware-in-the-loop experiments were used in the analysis. Short and long-term effects of the energy storage system and their importance for achieving ZEH2E conditions were identified. Proposed solar, and battery utilization indexes revealed the short-term effect of the battery storage, imperceptible even in daily average values. Hydrogen production and vehicle autonomy values strongly depended on the season of the year, location, vehicle characteristics, driving cycle, and household load, therefore two indexes were proposed to compare the different scenarios: the hydrogen production-to - average household power load ratio (m_H2-to-load) and the average vehicle power per traveled distance. These indexes allowed us to reveal low effective load-location pairs for hydrogen production and low effective driving cycle-vehicle pairs for hydrogen utilization. Our results revealed that the average data to analyze ZEH2E conditions is not enough and that detailed data is necessary.