This study proposes a new two-stage framework for selecting hydrogen refueling station (HRS) sites. The first stage employs an interactive multi-criteria decision-making approach for decision analysis, while the second stage uses a genetic algorithm to optimize demand and hydrogen source (HS) distances, and to plan HRS locations and quantities across the initial, medium-term, and long-term phases. When HRS numbers rise from 12 to 25, utilization drops to 88%, but total demand distance falls sharply. Further increasing to 35 cuts, utilization decreases to 77.14% and significantly narrows the demand distance reduction margin. The results reveal that once the construction scale exceeds the marginal benefit inflection point, the contribution of newly added stations to improving service convenience is attenuated considerably. This study confirms the consistency between the law of diminishing marginal benefits and falling facility utilization efficiency, and provides an HRS layout framework for regions with diverse economic development and hydrogen endowments. • Developed a decision analysis-optimization coupling framework. • The siting models integrate economic, hydrogen sources, and demand nodes. • Obtained siting results for the initial and medium-to-long term phases. • Marginal benefit is synchronous with facility utilization rate.
Jiang et al. (Sun,) studied this question.