NREL’s SERA mannequin could possibly be a key technique to decarbonize US transportation.
Decarbonizing transportation in america is not any small feat and proponents of hydrogen imagine utilizing clear hydrogen and gas cells for transportation purposes – particularly medium- and heavy-duty autos – is a crucial a part of decarbonization. Nevertheless, to make clear H2 an actual resolution, this is able to take the profitable widespread deployment of hydrogen infrastructure, like refueling stations. NREL’s newly revealed Situation Analysis and Regionalization Evaluation (SERA) mannequin might assist to make this profitable deployment achievable and at an accelerated charge.
What’s the SERA mannequin?
The SERA mannequin, designed by the US Division of Vitality’s (DOE’s) Nationwide Renewable Laboratory (NREL), gives insights that may information the event of infrastructure and funding choices for transportation, dashing up the adoption of hydrogen at scale.
This adoption doesn’t solely embrace clear hydrogen transportation purposes for gas cell electrical autos (FCEVs), but in addition different purposes exterior of the transportation sector.
Finally, the SERA mannequin is designed to optimize hydrogen productionhydrogen transportation, hydrogen supply, and hydrogen allotting development expertise in addition to timing and site.
Analyzing each provide and demand for the clear hydrogen market.
The SERA mannequin isn’t a one-dimensional information. As an alternative, the device has been designed to research each the availability and demand sides of the H2 market.
As an illustration, it may be used to:
- Design essentially the most cost-effective hydrogen supply-chain infrastructure required to help an evolving clear hydrogen market.
- Calculate various car adoption.
- Uncover the best dimension, places and variety of hydrogen refueling stations.
- Calculate the quantity and capability of varied sorts of hydrogen manufacturing models required to satisfy demand in a fashion that’s each cost-effective and spatially optimized.
- Estimate the consumption of fleet-wide journey, power and gas.
The SERA device is extremely versatile as inputs will be customized configured to deal with an array of situations outlined by customers. It will probably additionally complement different NREL and DOE infrastructure evaluation instruments.
Flexibility is what makes SERA so distinctive.
Though designed to assist optimize clear hydrogen buildout, the SERA mannequin can be utilized for any gas or materials, in response to Mark Chung, group supervisor for Infrastructure and Vitality Storage Evaluation at NREL. Chung defined that this includes carbon dioxidestating for example that SERA can mannequin the pathways for carbon seize and storage which are essentially the most price efficient. “SERA’s flexible framework to accommodate any commodity or mixture of commodities is truly unique in this sense,” Chung mentioned.
