An energy demand model for a fleet of plug-in fuel cell vehicles and commercial building interfaced with a clean energy hub Faraz Syed, Michael Fowler*, David Wan, Yaser Maniyali Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada article info Article history: Received 13 July 2009 Received in revised form 27 August 2009 Accepted 30 August 2009 Available online 2 October 2009 Keywords: Hydrogen Hybrid vehicle Fleet Commercial building Energy demand Energy hub Integrated energy system abstract This paper presents an energy demand model for a fleet of plug-in fuel cell vehicles and a medium-sized commercial/office building interfaced with a clean energy hub. The approach taken is to model the architecture and daily operation of every individual vehicle in the fleet. A simplified architecture model was developed, with daily operation divided into two periods: charging and travelling. During the charging period, the vehicle charges its batteries and refills its compressed hydrogen tanks. During the travelling period, the vehicle depletes the batteries and hydrogen tanks based on distance travelled. Daily travel distance is generated by a stochastic model. The modeling of the clean energy hub is also presented. The clean energy hub functions as an interface between electricity supply and the energy demand (i.e. hydrogen and electricity) of the vehicle fleet and the commercial building. Finally, a sample case is presented to demonstrate the use of the models. ª 2009 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Traditionally the electricity and transportation sectors have remained distinct due to the different energy carriers involved. Their carriers dictated energy pathways that did not intersect significantly and there was low interaction between the sectors. Transportation relies on liquid fuels derived from fossils fuels with many associated environmental impacts. However these sectors are evolving in order to reduce overall environmental impact and improve energy security, sustain- ability and reliability [5,15]. In particular the transportation sector is moving towards hydrogen based transportation in order to reduce urban air pollution, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and displace petroleum [21]. Hydrogen is an energy carrier that can be generated with any electricity source, stored in various forms, used onboard vehicles and distributed by pipeline or truck. Hydrogen also provides an energy storage medium which enables the move towards greater use of intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. Of most interest hydrogen will enable new interactions between the electricity and transportation sectors. As an energy carrier, the use of hydrogen is complimentary to the use of electricity [24] and it is reasonable to view the sectors as ultimately merging to become part of an integrated energy system which uses electricity and hydrogen as its primary energy carriers and storage medium [7,11]. The concept of an integrated energy system, also called the hydrogen economy, is promising because it would enable the * Corresponding author. E-mail address: mfowler@uwaterloo.ca (M. Fowler). Available at www.sciencedirect.com journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/he 0360-3199/$ – see front matter ª 2009 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijhydene.2009.08.089 international journal of hydrogen energy 35 (2010) 5154–5163