The project “A Technology Roadmap for Australia’s Hydrogen Delivery Infrastructure”, concluded late 2007, was developed at University of Wollongong with support from the CSIRO Energy Transformed Flagship.
It constitutes an important knowledge framework for Australian hydrogen stakeholders in relation to hydrogen delivery infrastructure, organized into three closely related streams of research activities:
- Technology (state-of-the art and key R&D needs for hydrogen delivery pathways),
- Policy and Regulations (review of international RD&D activities, safety and regulatory frameworks for hydrogen delivery), and
- Economics (survey of cost and performances, techno-economic "delivery pathways" analysis.
This paper reports on the activities developed within the latter stream. A comparative techno-economic analysis has been developed with the aim to provide a high-level assessment of the likely costs of hydrogen delivery in Australia under the different delivery pathways described in Figure 1. This analysis builds on the Australian-specific datasets of cost and performances for hydrogen delivery technologies developed within the project and is performed by means of a spreadsheet modelling framework organized into a two-tiered structure.
The systems analysis framework and the preliminary results for the delivery pathways analyzed within the project are here presented.
Directions for future research are also discussed, with particular regard to the proposed evolution of the systems analysis framework developed and the scope for its integration with wider energy future modeling activities in Australia.