Solar hydrogen infrastructure of road and maritime traffic in Croatia

In the next 10 to 20 years the world and national economy will be faced with the need to transition from traditional sources of primary energy (e.g., fossil fuels) to renewable energy resources, mainly solar and wind power. At the same time hydrogen will appear on the energy scene, so already today we discuss the coming 'Hydrogen Economy', i.e., the economy based on hydrogen use. Given such developments, the question is how and when Croatia will begin to keep up with this global scenario? One of possible answers is discussed in this paper. It starts with the fact that Croatia is a significant tourist destination, visited by 10 millions mainly motorized tourists a year. World Tourism Organization forecast the increase in foreign tourists' arrivals by 8.4 percent a year until 2020. More than 90 percent of tourists stay in the Adriatic coast and islands; 55 percent of them arrive in the two summer months. Hence, the visits occur mainly in the region where and during the season when solar energy is abundant. The other assumption is the so called Hart Report, a study addressing the introduction of hydrogen infrastructure in the European traffic road system. It projects the number of hydrogen-fueled vehicles on the roads of the EU until 2020. Based on these two assumptions estimated is the number of hydrogen-fueled vehicles that in this period could arrive to the Croatian coast and islands for which the hydrogen infrastructure should be provided. Since during the holiday season thousands of motorized vessels sail along the Croatian coast and islands and many of them have some of 'hydrogen options' installed, it will be an additional reason for development for hydrogen infrastructure on the islands. Considering the above the paper proposed the hydrogen infrastructure based on photo-voltaic technology of solar energy use and water electrolysis as hydrogen production technology. The suggestion is to connect these installations to the Croatian electricity production and distribution system which would enable construction of photo-voltaic fields in solar energy rich southern Dalmatia as well as production and storage of hydrogen along main traffic routes and points that are vital for the tourist industry. In addition to hydrogen production, such system would contribute to solving the problem of peak loads in the power system. At the same time, planning, development and construction of such a system could be a major development and technological project which could in a long term employ national scientific and industrial capacities, and Croatia would gain the image of technologically advanced country.(author)