The problem of hydrogen station location is often studied through understanding refueling behavior or reviewing the experience of gasoline stations. Driven by the notion "where you drive more is where you more likely need refueling", this paper develops a new approach where station siting is treated as a fuel-travel-back problem and the only required data is VMT distribution. Such a fuel-travel-back problem is a typical transportation problem and is solved as mix-integerprogramming model. When the total fuel-travel-back time is minimized, so is the average refueling travel time of a random motorist, for which theoretical deduction is provided. The model is applied to derive an optimal station roll-out scheme for Southern California. The results show that, if station size constraints are relaxed, only 18% of existing gas station number is needed to achieve the current fuel accessibility of gasoline in the region. Fewer stations lead to larger station size, suggesting a need to re-examine the current speculation on designs of hydrogen station and distribution system and to conduct more regional studies for discovery of optimistic and pessimistic regions for hydrogen. The results also indicate that early stations should be located strategically and even at low-demand locations, which is contradictory to existing proposition.

Southern California has been proposed as a likely site for developing a hydrogen refueling infrastructure. In this paper, we apply dynamic programming to identify optimized strategies for supplying hydrogen over time in Southern California. GIS-based traffic data are used to model the location and magnitude of hydrogen demand over time. Refueling stations are sited based on the location of demand and the trade-off between convenience and costs. We use engineering/economic models to describe a variety of possible hydrogen supply options. Both onsite and central production technologies including biomass gasification, coal gasification, natural gas reforming, and water electrolysis are investigated. For central production routes, several delivery modes are analyzed including liquid and compressed gas trucks, and gas pipelines. These technologies compete with each other to meet an exogenously estimated hydrogen demand over time at lowest cost. At each time step over a specified transition period, the model uses a dynamic programming algorithm to select the best strategy for building up the infrastructure. We find that 1) hydrogen could be cost competitive based on region-specific spatial optimization; 2) the best buildup strategy for Southern California could be industry hydrogen in early stage, bridged by onsite natural SMR and followed by biomass central gasification and then coal gasification with carbon capture and sequestration; 3) the feasibility of CCS is critical in CO2 emissions mitigation.

Southern California has been proposed as a likely site for developing a hydrogen refueling infrastructure. In this paper, we apply dynamic programming to identify optimized strategies for supplying hydrogen over time in Southern California. GIS-based traffic data are used to model the location and magnitude of hydrogen demand over time. Refueling stations are sited based on the location of demand and the trade-off between convenience and costs. We use engineering/economic models to describe a variety of possible hydrogen supply options. Both onsite and central production technologies including biomass gasification, coal gasification, natural gas reforming, and water electrolysis are investigated. For central production routes, several delivery modes are analyzed including liquid and compressed gas trucks, and gas pipelines. These technologies compete with each other to meet an exogenously estimated hydrogen demand over time at lowest cost. At each time step over a specified transition period, the model uses a dynamic programming algorithm to select the best strategy for building up the infrastructure. We find that 1) hydrogen could be cost competitive based on region-specific spatial optimization; 2) the best buildup strategy for Southern California could be industry hydrogen in early stage, bridged by onsite natural SMR and followed by biomass central gasification and then coal gasification with carbon capture and sequestration; 3) the feasibility of CCS is critical in CO2 emissions mitigation.