California ARB Awards $6.8M to Support Construction of Four More Public Hydrogen Stations
07 April 2009
The California Air Resources Board has awarded Mebtahi Station Services, San Francisco Airport, Shell Hydrogen and UCLA $1.7 million each to supplement their construction of hydrogen refueling stations, doubling the amount of hydrogen available to the public.
The grants, provided by the California legislature and distributed by the ARB through a competitive bid process, are aimed at increasing the use of alternative fuels. The new stations will serve the growing number of fuel-cell vehicles on the road in the Los Angeles and the San Francisco areas and will double the amount of hydrogen available to the public.
Hydrogen is one of the many fuels in California’s future, but we need to cultivate the industry’s early growth. This grant money will nurture a burgeoning technology that will provide jobs, invigorate our economy, and provide the state with clean power.
—ARB Chairman Mary Nichols
Mebtahi Station Services will use the funds to add hydrogen fuel to their existing Chevron Station near the corner of Western Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway in Harbor City. In a partnership with Capital Investment Group, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., and General Physics, Mebtahi will provide up to 100 kilograms of hydrogen per day to vehicles in a publicly familiar retail setting.
The San Francisco Airport will build a hydrogen refueling facility at the airport’s Millbrae Avenue exit on Highway 101. This station will dispense 120 kilograms per day and fuel passenger cars and buses operated by transit agencies throughout the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
Shell Hydrogen will also add hydrogen to an existing retail gasoline station at 1600 Jamboree Road in Newport Beach. The station will produce up to 100 kilograms per day of hydrogen on site through a natural gas steam-reformation system.
UCLA, in a partnership with Air Products, General Physics and South Coast Air Quality Management District, plans to build a hydrogen fueling station at its transit facility at the corner of Veteran and Kinross Avenues in Westwood. This publicly available facility will produce hydrogen on site and will provide 140 kilograms per day.
The average refueling amount for a fuel-cell vehicle is about four to five kilos.
Politicians can't comprehend today's complex energy issues. Hydrogen as a transportation fuel is a dead end idea for the simple fact that it is three times as expensive as other options:
http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/Graphics/img23.gif
http://www.biodiversivist.com
Posted by: Biodiversivist | 07 April 2009 at 10:08 AM
Is it just me, or is there a little cognitive dissonance when I read...
"...The station will produce up to 100 kilograms per day of hydrogen on site through a natural gas steam-reformation system."
Wouldn't it make more sense just to increase the number of natural gas fueling stations? CH4 makes so much more sense as a fuel than H2.
Posted by: Nick Lyons | 07 April 2009 at 10:45 AM
Natural gas does make a lot more sense. We will see more of these Tomorrow Land announcements over time. Arnold had made some statements years ago about a Hydrogen Highway, so this is what comes of it. Demo hype never ends, it just fades away.
Posted by: SJC | 07 April 2009 at 11:59 AM
@Nick
Methane is so 19th Century!
Posted by: dursun | 07 April 2009 at 12:05 PM
The idea of California as tomorrowland.
Take a hydrogen vehicle from the airport possible to have a H2 experience.
This will do nothing for real people but will ensure California's place of choice for the test infrastructure to allow continuous real world R&D.
Enough already.
Posted by: arnold | 07 April 2009 at 12:13 PM
@SJC:
Back to the future...
Posted by: Nick Lyons | 07 April 2009 at 12:55 PM
@dursun:
(Previous comment meant for you; oops...)
Posted by: Nick Lyons | 07 April 2009 at 12:56 PM
It would all be wonderful and futuristic if hydrogen were available in abundance for free. (which may be the implication)
Then there is the fact that a fuel cell might cost 1 million dollars and last less than 50k miles. Other than that it is a rosy tomorrow for us all!
Posted by: SJC | 07 April 2009 at 01:19 PM
Some time ago, I wrote that the "hydrogen economy" was merely a way of making certain that the fossil-fuel industry would dominate the market for transportation energy. This is one more data point supporting the hypothesis.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 07 April 2009 at 08:17 PM
Hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe and has been for billions of years.
Disrespect it at your peril.
Posted by: ToppaTom | 07 April 2009 at 09:12 PM
It doesnt take a brainiac to realise that more options are better then less. H2 and fuel cells are options and ones that do things batteries and biofuels dont do.
Do you realy want to hope and roll the dice on not needing them in 20 years or would you rather just spend the extra money and be sure we have that tool ready?
H2 is handy and fuel cells definetly are VERY handy. We already are using both now so might as well run with it and see where it leads.
Posted by: wintermane2000 | 08 April 2009 at 12:55 AM
@wintermane2000:
"H2 is handy..."
How so? CH4 is "handy," as in readily available and easy to use. H2 is not available without energy-intensive extraction from other compounds. Once you've produced it it's not very energy-dense, it's hard to store, it's problematic to transport. CH4 is "handy" in that we have already built extensive infrastructure to store and distribute it.
CH4 has users. H2 has promoters and believers.
Posted by: Nick Lyons | 08 April 2009 at 08:44 AM
More to the point, H2 has the coal and natural gas lobbies behind it as eager suppliers, and the oil companies behind it as a way to stall electrification. Electricity from wind or nuclear can put all of them out of business, so it's their mutual interest to keep it from happening.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 08 April 2009 at 10:47 AM
If the R&D community keeps making good progress on batteries, it may be a done deal. Project Better Place is using the cell phone model with battery swaps. Sooner or later a combination may fall into place that works well.
Posted by: SJC | 08 April 2009 at 12:07 PM
Ah but the co2 is the problem. A nat gas powered car is still belting out way too much co2. By the time they add in plug in hybrid and other stuff to get the co2 down to say 60g/km we will likely be requiring 30.
And that is if natural gas lasts it also has a peak and that should be any day now.
As for h2 it allows you to store one heck of alot of power onboard. Far more then a battery can. And increasing range doesnt increase costs nearly the way it does in batteries. Much less weight.
Already fuel cells are winning plac es simply because they are small enough to fit where batteries wont.
Posted by: wintermane2000 | 08 April 2009 at 12:12 PM
Make methane out of biomass and sequester the CO2. The carbon coming out of the tailpipe was absorbed by the plants. The left over went into the ground for CO2 negative.
Posted by: SJC | 08 April 2009 at 07:14 PM
If we can make enough methane, that works.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 10 April 2009 at 03:16 PM