Hydrogen refueling stations and fuel cell buses four year operational analysis under real-world conditions

Worldwide about 550 hydrogen refueling stations (HRS) were in operation in 2021, of which 38% were in Europe. With their number expected to grow even further, the collection and investigation of real-world station operative data are fundamental to tracking their activity in terms of safety issues, performances, maintenance, reliability, and energy use. This paper analyses the parameters that characterize the refueling of 350 bar fuel cell buses (FCB) in five HRS within the 3Emotion project. The HRS are characterized by different refueling capacities, hydrogen supply schemes, storage volumes and pressures, and operational strategies. The FCB operate over various duty cycles circulating on urban and extra-urban routes. From data logs provided by the operators, a dataset of four years of operation has been created. The results show a similar hydrogen amount per fill distribution but quite different refueling times among the stations. The average daily mass per bus and refueling time are around 14.62 kg and 10.28 min. About 50% of the total amount of hydrogen is dispensed overnight, and the refueling events per bus are typically every 24 h. On average, the buses' time spent in service is 10 h per day. The hydrogen consumption is approximately 7 kg/100 km, a rather effective result reached by the technology. The station utilization is below 30% for all sites, the buses availability hardly exceeds 80%.