Innovative renewable energy solutions for hydrogen vehicles

This paper presents a study or innovative vehicle design for fuel cell vehicles. Surveys on latest technologies of battery, fuel cells, regenerative brake, and photovoltaics suggested three types of fuel cell vehicle design: FCV (simple fuel cell vehicle), HFCV (hybrid fuel cell vehicle with regenerative brake), and HFCVP (hybrid fuel cell vehicle with rooftop photovoltaics). The driving powers or the vehicles are estimated by official 10-15 mode driving test data. Dynamic simulations of HFCVP, using 1-min solar radiation data of several cities in Japan, show the hydrogen consumption for three driving patterns a year and for the different capacities of battery and hydrogen sub-tank. The total cost of three types of fuel cell vehicles is estimated by combining cost of fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen fuel. The results show that the hydrogen Consumption and CO emission of H FCV are nearly 20% less and that of HFCVP is nearly 40% less than the hydrogen consumption of simple FCV. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.