The model starts with a single source of hydrogen fuel, serving a single point of use (POU).
For small hydrogen powered vehicle fleets, a single Pioneer Hydrogen Refuelling Station can be consistently used on-site with only a day or a week of unavailability when the Pioneer HRS is required to be taken back to the H₂ source to be refilled.
As the customer builds up their hydrogen vehicle fleet, N+1 Pioneers can be deployed to maintain continuous availability. As one unit is refuelling hydrogen vehicles at the POU, another is being filled with hydrogen at the H₂ source, ensuring a continuous reliable refuelling point. A third unit could be added for additional redundancy.
Next, more customers and more POUs are added, served from the same H₂ source. Additional Pioneer Hydrogen Refuelling Stations are deployed, but the incremental numbers required are lower due to network effects. The larger fleet of Pioneers improves resilience in the hydrogen refuelling network as Pioneer stations can back each other up.
A new H₂ source can then be added to the refuelling network for additional resilience ensuring the network no longer has a single point of failure. This allows for more POUs to be added, served by additional Pioneer stations, which can also be located further from the original H₂ source if required. Redundancy is now managed at network level and hydrogen vehicle fleet operations can be optimised to minimise CapEx outlay on incremental Pioneers.
This continues until such time as some vehicle fleets reach scale where a fixed hydrogen infrastructure is justified. With the Pioneer Hydrogen Refuelling Station deployment model, CapEx on a fixed refuelling station is delayed and it is only commissioned when sufficient scale is reached that a high utilisation is immediately possible. At this point the mobile Pioneer HRS can continue to serve the station as a distribution asset with high pressure cascade built in, or it can simply be redeployed to serve other POUs and replaced by conventional hydrogen tube trailer supply.
Take a look at how the Pioneer performs against a typical decant method with its innovative cascade technology, incorporated to provide high pressure and optimise the utilisation of hydrogen, or contact us now for more information.
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