April 26th, 2010
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Fuel Cells 2000 Reveals the Top 5 Fuel Cell States in New Report
WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Fuel Cells 2000, a non-profit outreach organization, has chosen its Top 5 Fuel Cell States in a new report, “State of the States: Fuel Cells in America.” They are: (alphabetical order) California, Connecticut, New York, Ohio, and South Carolina.
“State of the States: Fuel Cells in America.”
Fuel Cells 2000 analyzed the seven regions of the United States, compiling state activities including supportive fuel cell and hydrogen policies, installations and demonstrations in each state, Road Maps and the overall level of activism. Each of the Top Five was selected for different reasons, but “they all recognize that establishing a fuel cell-friendly climate brings environmental benefits and jobs to their state,” said Jennifer Gangi, program director, Fuel Cells 2000.
- California is the world leader in vehicle demonstrations, hydrogen fueling stations and strict emissions standards, and has aggressive policies supporting fuel cell power generation utilizing renewable biofuels.
- Connecticut has high profile installations, offers substantial financial support for fuel power generation systems and is the headquarters for several major fuel cell manufacturers.
- New York has a long history of support for fuel cell research and deployment.
- Ohio has a well funded business development strategy aimed at fuel cells and the supply chain.
- South Carolina universities take a collaborative approach; there is an aggressive economic development program and activism in forklift demonstrations.
Said Gangi, “We hope that our report encourages lawmakers, local officials and average citizens, to want to emulate the Top 5 and move their state forward. With many major fuel cell manufacturers and suppliers located in the United States, this industry is poised to deliver on the promise of green growth, clean energy and American jobs.”
There are more details on all the fuel cell activity in the Top 5 as well as the rest of the 50 states and District of Columbia in each state listing and the Appendices. Download the report for free at: http://www.fuelcells.org/statereport.html.
April 23th, 2010
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Fuel Cell Bus Fills up at NREL's Hydrogen Fueling Station
This fuel cell bus filled up at NREL's hydrogen fueling station after its stint at the Olympics.
The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver featured an international showcase for advanced vehicles, including the fuel cell bus that recently filled up at the hydrogen fueling station at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Thanks to a new fueling agreement, drivers with NREL approval can now gain access to the station for fueling their hydrogen-powered vehicles.
The station was constructed last year at NREL’s National Wind Technology Center near Boulder, Colo. The hydrogen dispensed at the station is produced via renewable electrolysis as part of the wind-to-hydrogen (Wind2H2) demonstration project. A partnership between NREL and Xcel Energy, the Wind2H2 project integrates wind turbines and photovoltaic arrays to electrolyzer stacks that split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen is then compressed and stored for later use.
“The station was designed to accommodate a full range of vehicles—from light-duty cars and SUVs to full-size buses,” said NREL’s Leslie Eudy. “This was the first bus to fuel at the station.”
NREL is evaluating the prototype bus as part of its extensive technology validation efforts. NREL first began evaluating hydrogen-fueled transit buses in 2000, and has since published reports on fuel cell bus performance and fleet experience for several transit agencies in the United States.
Designed and manufactured by Proterra in Golden, Colo., the plug-in hybrid-electric fuel cell bus combines a unique bank of fast-charge, lithium-titanate batteries with two 16-kW Hydrogenics fuel cells. The vehicle operates in a similar fashion to other plug-in hybrids, but instead of having a gas- or diesel-powered engine to extend its range, the Proterra bus uses hydrogen fuel cells. The fuel cells, which are fed from tanks located on the vehicle's roof, transform hydrogen and oxygen into electricity to charge the batteries. The bus emits only water vapor.
“Proterra is a new bus manufacturer,” added Eudy. “This gives us an exciting opportunity to evaluate yet another fuel cell system design.”
After its demonstration at the Olympics, the bus returned to Golden for routine maintenance and testing, and then traveled to Columbia, South Carolina, where it’s in service at the Central Midlands Regional Transit Authority and the University of South Carolina’s transit fleet.
April 19th, 2010
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NHA Hydrogen Conference and Expo Comes to Long Beach, CA May 3 - 6
Washington, DC--In Long Beach, California next month, bright minds and big ideas will come together to advance an evolving industry and move it another giant step towards commercialization. Each year, the NHA Hydrogen Conference and Expo attracts big thinkers, stakeholders and change-makers from across all sectors of the hydrogen marketplace, as they gather at their premier event to share emerging research, learn about new developments, and foster the commercialization of hydrogen and fuel cell technology.
Invariably cutting-edge and always intriguing, this year's Conference & Expo promises not to disappoint. Held May 3-6 in Long Beach, California (one of the most fertile environments for hydrogen development in North America), the conference will provide participants with a multi-pronged program that gets to the heart of the issues at work in their industry today. Two key topics covered during the 3-1/2 day event will be: hydrogen infrastructure and early-market business opportunities.
Nearly 100 sessionsare offered overall, including 20 different presentations on solutions for building fueling stations and a study of H2 station plans in Germany, Canada and Norway. Among the 13 keynotesare such notables as: Markus Bachmeier, Head of Hydrogen Solutions, Linde Corporation; Tom Sullivan, Chairman of Proton Energy Systems; Yoshihiko Masuda, Managing Officer, Toyota Motor Corporation; Gijs van Breda Vriesman, Commercial Manager, Europe Alternative Energy, Shell Hydrogen; and Catherine Dunwoody, Executive Director, California Fuel Cell Partnership. Participants will also be privy to major announcements like the winner of the $100,000 Proton Energy Scholarship, the winning team and design from the Hydrogen Student Design Contest and a several other major industry announcements expected to break during the event.
In addition to the schedule of Conference sessions, the event will include several stand-alone educational events. The invitation-only Hydrogen Business Solutions Forumwill help existing and potential users better understand hydrogen and fuel cell technologies and learn how it can best be used to bring a competitive advantage to their businesses. A daylong Renewable Hydrogen Workshopwill bring industry and government entities together to share information and move the industry toward a future that includes hydrogen from renewable resources. And a newly announced Hydrogen from Nuclear Information Sessionwill also now be a part of the program.
When participants aren't putting their heads together to pave the way into the future for hydrogen and fuel cells, they can treat themselves to a preview of the next generation of technology at NHA's accompanying Expo. The 30,000 square-foot showcasefeatures the latest products, early market technology fuel cells, engines and other cutting-edge technology. Exhibitors at the near-sellout Expo include Honda, Mercedes Benz, Air Products and Chemicals, Westinghouse Company and dozens of others in government, academia and private industry, including 43 exhibits never before seen at the NHA event.
Attendees can also take advantage of three scheduled industry toursto Honda's Solar Hydrogen Station, Toyota's R&D Facility in Torrance and the Air Products Hydrogen Production facility in Carson. This year's tours hold special interest for many hydrogen professionals, due to the Conference's location in southern California. Featuring the third largest capacity for hydrogen production of any state, California provides an excellent object lesson, with miles of hydrogen pipelines, fuel cells in commercial use and much more-all near the event site.
Another popular aspect at NHA is the "Ride and Drive," one of the best displays of hydrogen vehicles anywhere. Participants are welcome to test drive a variety of hydrogen vehicles, ranging from engine-powered to electric to hybrids. Cars include the Chevy Fuel EV, Honda FCX Clarity, Hyundai Tucson FCEV, Mazda RX-8, Mercedes Benz B-Class F-CELL, Toyota FCHV-adv and Volkswagen Tiguan FCV. At least two of these vehicles will be offered to drive for the first time ever at this event.
Finally, for anyone who would like to learn more about hydrogen and fuel cells but is not interested in the workshops and expert presenters, both the Expo and the "Ride and Drive" will be open free of charge to the publicTuesday, May 4, from 10:00 am to 4:30 pm.
April 17th, 2010
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Hydrogen still in the eco-car race
By ARTHUR MAX (AP) – Apr 17, 2010
BERLIN — Hydrogen, one of Earth's most abundant elements, once was seen as green energy's answer to the petroleum-driven car: easy to produce, available everywhere and nonpolluting when burned.
Hydrogen energy was defeated by a mountain of obstacles — the fear of explosion by the highly flammable gas, the difficulty of carrying the fuel in large, heavy tanks in the vehicle, and the lack of a refueling network. Automakers turned to biofuels, electricity or the gas-electric hybrid.
But hydrogen, it turns out, never was completely out of the race. Now Israeli scientists and entrepreneurs claim to have brought hydrogen energy a step closer by putting it in much smaller, lighter containers.
Rather than using metal or composite cylinders of compressed gas that look like bulky scuba gear, hydrogen is packed into glass filaments which, once out of the lab, will be only slightly thicker than a human hair.
These 370 glass capillaries are bundled into a glass tube called a capillary array, about the width of a drinking straw. The scientists say 11,000 such arrays will fuel a car for 400 kilometers (240 miles), take less than half the space and weight of tanks currently installed in the few hydrogen cars now available.
"We have shown new materials that can store more hydrogen than any other system," says Dan Eliezer, chief scientist of C.En Ltd., the company based in Geneva, Switzerland, where the Israelis are developing their invention.
The scientists make no attempt to improve the standard fuel cell, which is not much different today from when it was invented more than 150 years ago. A fuel cell makes electricity from chemical reactions involving hydrogen and oxygen, producing only water vapor as a byproduct. The fuel cell can be compared with a standard car's engine, while the capillary arrays would be comparable to the gasoline tank.
The system was unveiled in Berlin at a demonstration for The Associated Press at the German Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, known as BAM, which has been testing the materials since 2008 and has pronounced the system safe. Also attending was a representative of Italian-based Generali Insurance, which has invested $10 million in the project.
While its backers call the technology a breakthrough, it is unlikely to gain traction without a large injection of capital to scale up development. It also would need a distribution system and the support of major car companies, which have poured billions of dollars into their own closely guarded research programs.
Auto companies "are still investing significant amounts of money in hydrogen and fuel cells," and have hundreds of researchers working on the technology, said David Hart, director of E4tech, a business and energy consultancy in London. Automakers refuse to disclose details of their research or funding.
Hart said the glass capillaries appear to be an "interesting" technology that would be "very significant" if it were to provide the energy claimed by the company. But if it means creating a new refueling infrastructure, "it may still not be the right answer for cars," he said.
Like electric cars, the driving force behind hydrogen research is the need to break away from oil and rein in emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for climate change, especially carbon dioxide from industry and transport. Transportation adds about 13 percent of manmade carbon to the atmosphere.
Hydrogen boasts zero emissions. It can be produced from water through electrolysis, or harvested as the waste product of nuclear reactors and chemical plants.
"In terms of saving carbon dioxide, you do a great deal more with renewable hydrogen," said Danny Dicks, a biofuels expert from the British consultancy group Innovation Observatory. "So ultimately, hydrogen is where things ought to be driving toward."
Automakers, for now, still are focused on battery power. At the Geneva Motor Show last month, nearly all major manufacturers displayed their latest electric vehicles or plans to produce them. The few hydrogen vehicles on the floor attracted little attention.
It was not always that way.
U.S. President George W. Bush allocated $1.2 billion for hydrogen research and said in his 2003 State of the Union address: "The first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen and pollution free." The Obama administration largely scrapped the program.
In Europe, too, hydrogen is low-priority. The Dutch government, for example, recently announced a euro5 million ($6.75 million) subsidy for hydrogen, but gave eight times more for electric cars. Buyers of plug-ins get tax breaks and rebates, and cities like London and Amsterdam are planting charge-up pillars on their streets.
"Electricity is taking all the subsidy schemes. It's taking it away from hydrogen," said Robert van den Hoed of Ecofys, an independent Dutch consultancy on renewable energy.
The main reason is cost. Electric cars are road-ready and in production, while hydrogen vehicles are still experimental. Nissan's new electric car, the Leaf, will go on sale for about $25,000 in the United States, including a government rebate.
Honda has produced a roadworthy hydrogen vehicle, the FCX Clarity, but it is not for sale. Only 50 of them are available for lease in the United States at $600 per month; Honda says it intends to increase the fleet to 200 this year. Honda declines to put a sales tag on the Clarity, but some experts say the market price would be $1 million each. Toyota, a leader in electric car technology, plans to put its first hydrogen vehicle on the road in 2015.
In December, the German luxury carmaker BMW ended an experimental run of 100 hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engines and retreated back into the laboratory for more research. "We learned everything we wanted to learn from this huge field test," said spokesman Tobias Hahn, and BMW is now working on the next generation.
"We are still committed to hydrogen as the long-term alternative for switching to sustainable mobility," Hahn said, speaking from Munich, adding that the biggest problem is on-board storage.
Among U.S. carmakers, General Motors produced a test fleet of 100 Chevrolet Equinox fuel cell cars and let 5,000 people test them over a 25 month period. Like BMW, Chevrolet is withdrawing the vehicles to upgrade the technology.
A combination of plug-in electric and hydrogen may emerge as the most eco-friendly solution. "A fuel cell hybrid looks like a good long-term option," said Hart. "It's not an either-or. It's both, most likely."
Public transport also is experimenting with hydrogen. The Vancouver Winter Olympics deployed 20 fuel cell buses. The European Union and 31 industries teamed up to run a four-year trial of hydrogen buses on regular passenger routes in 10 cities ending last year, and a new generation of buses will begin operating later this year, said Frits van Drunen, who runs the project for the Dutch public transport network GVB.
"We predict that by 2017 these buses will be priced per kilometer at the same level as diesel buses," said van Drunen, interviewed at GVB's hydrogen refueling station in Amsterdam.
At BAM, the Berlin testing site, researchers guided a remote-controlled model truck around the laboratory floor powered by a fuel cell and three hydrogen-filled arrays bound together, about the thickness of a thumb. A similar device lit up a panel with 20 LED bulbs. The researchers say such devices can be built into power packs for laptop computers and even mobile phones.
BAM's research director, Kai Holtapples, said the C.En system can be on the road within two to five years if it can be developed as a replaceable rack that can be swapped at filling stations. Eventually, cars will be able to refuel with nozzles, like gas pumps today, he said. "Both systems will need some engineering, of course, but some ideas already exist."
BAM has no financial stake in the capillary array project, he said.
Moshe Stern, C.En's chief executive, said the electric car will dominate the market for years to come, but the cheap and unlimited supply of hydrogen will make it the power source of the future.
Within a few years, perhaps a decade, hydrogen fuel will shift the world's energy balance away from oil, he said.
"The real revolution is not the technical revolution, it is the political revolution," said Stern.
"We are Israelis. We know what it means to be blackmailed by oil," he said.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
April 8th, 2010
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Hydrogen and Fuel Cells:
The U.S. Market Report
Today, customers are buying real hydrogen and fuel cell products such as buses, lift trucks for warehouses and stationary power units to make electricity without power from the grid.
For the first time, the National Hydrogen Association has reported on the state of many of these sectors of the hydrogen and fuel cell industry. NHA's Hydrogen & Fuel Cells: U.S. Market Report presents industry-reported data to better inform decisions related to the production of hydrogen and the products that use it. The report, published in 2010 and based mostly on 2008 data, focuses on three main areas of the U.S. merchant hydrogen market:
- hydrogen production and delivery;
- hydrogen use;
- education and employment.
Please view the original article to download the full report or the brief.
April 1st, 2010
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eHydrogen Solutions Announces New Self-Contained Hydrogen Cell Requiring No Outside Power Source
eHydrogen Solutions, Inc. (eHs) announced an important addition to its core On Demand Hydrogen Production capabilities with the launch of the H2-Reactor Development Project. The H2-Reactor is a self contained On Demand Hydrogen Production (ODHP) system utilizing only water and reactive metal alloys including aluminum or magnesium. No outside power source is required and the system generates no emissions. The resultant oxides and alloys are economically replenished, sustainable, and recyclable.
The reactive metals cause water molecules to release hydrogen and oxygen, which immediately reacts with aluminum to produce aluminum oxide (alumina) which can be recycled back into aluminum. Recycling aluminum from nearly pure alumina is less expensive than mining the aluminum-containing ore bauxite, thereby creating a reusable, sustainable, and zero-emission power source.
By recycling aluminum oxide back to aluminum, the cost of producing energy both as hydrogen and heat will continually decrease, and is expected to be well below 10 cents per kilowatt hour.
The Company views the H2-Reactor addition an essential addition to its overall design vision for its core ODHP technologies, particularly for high volume real-time hydrogen production environments such as Industrial Heating and Power Generation.
The Company recently announced the integration of its H-Solaris technology development, utilizing solar energy as the main power source for real-time hydrogen creation direct from water, with its expanding US Home Heating Joint Development Project. This addition of H2-Reactor capabilities not only adds further ODHP options for the expanding residential Combined Heating and Power market, but opens up the expansive Industrial Heating and Power Generation Market.
The H-Solaris and H2-Reactor development projects, together with the Company's advanced electrolysis technologies, when integrated into a fuel cell, hydrogen powered generator and/or advanced battery storage, enable sufficient hydrogen production to power a wide variety of residential, commercial and industrial applications. This has important potential implications, since hydrogen can be economically produced on-site and does not need to be transported.
The Company believes Distributed Power Generation, particularly Combined Heating and Power, to be an emerging growth sector promising to become a significant and vital energy option primed for strong sales growth.
The Company intends to develop and license a variety of technologies and power systems founded on its core holdings. The Company will make further announcements on the progress of each of these new initiatives and as the various core technologies are integrated into its development and partnership programs.
About eHydrogen Solutions
eHydrogen Solutions (eHs) specializes in the development of On Demand Hydrogen Production (ODHP) technologies designed to produce hydrogen in the most cost effective, environmentally friendly and sustainable manner possible for integration into a number of clean energy Distributed Power solutions. In addition to providing an "on demand" hydrogen source for aftermarket hydrogen enhancement applications that increases the efficiency of virtually any combustion process, eHs' scope of On Demand Hydrogen Production (ODHP) technologies enables the integration with fuel cell applications, advanced battery technologies and Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engines (HICE).
eHs' proprietary ODHP technologies are available today to qualified partners in a wide variety of vertical and/or geographic markets worldwide, through joint development/ adaptation, distribution and production agreements.
This press release contains statements (such as projections regarding future performance) that are forward-looking as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties. The company's website and prior SEC and Pink Sheets filings contain various disclosures and RISK FACTORS (incorporated herein by reference) and should be read before any investment decision.
The company maintains its web site at: www.eHydrogenSolutions.com
