Hydrogen from nuclear plus wind using real-time electricity prices. Abstract 154

'Full text:' During the early years of hydrogen's use as a vehicle fuel, penetration of the market will be small. This favours distributed production by electrolysis, which avoids the scale-dependent costs of distribution from centralized plants. For electrolysis actually to be the preferred option, capital equipment for electrolysis must be reasonably cheap but the dominant cost component is the electricity price. By about 2006, advanced designs of nuclear reactors should be available to produce electricity at around 30 US$/MW.h. The best approach to producing low-cost electrolytic hydrogen is shown to be use of such reactors to supply electricity to the grid at times of peak price and demand and to make hydrogen at other times. This model has been analysed using the actual prices of electricity paid by the Alberta Power Pool in 2002 and 2003 and by the Ontario Grid for 2003. The analysis shows clearly that this route electrolytic hydrogen can comfortably meet the US Department of Energy's hydrogen production-cost target of 2000$/t. Because of its low availability wind-produced electricity cannot meet this cost target. However, if wind availability can reach 35% availability, an intermittent supplementary current of wind-generated electricity may economically be fed to an electrolytic plant primarily supplied by nuclear power. Additional current raises the voltage for electrolysis but there would be only small additional capital costs. The two non-CO2-emitting sources, nuclear and wind (or other intermittent renewables with costs comparable to advanced nuclear) could become complementary, providing an affordable way of storing wind-generated electricity. (author)