BC Hydro and other businesses will steer hydrogen-powered vehicles along Lower Mainland streets in 2006.
As part of a program with Fuel Cells Canada, a Vancouver-based national non-profit group designed to accelerate the so-called hydrogen economy, Hydro's wholly owned subsidiary, Powertech Labs of Surrey, will obtain eight standard gasoline-powered Ford F-150 pickup trucks in February and convert them to hydrogen-powered vehicles.
Powertech will keep two vehicles for its own use and lease six out to Lower Mainland-based companies, municipalities, and other public and private-sector organizations.
"The goal of the program is really to promote the use of hydrogen as a clean fuel," says Allan Grant, Hydro's manager of hydrogen and fuel cell programs.
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| Bayne Stanley, Business Edge |
| BC Hydro's Allan Grant stands in front of a hydrogen-powered vehicle at one of the newly developed fuelling stations. |
Each truck will be valued at $100,000, which is cheap compared to fuel cell-powered vehicles that cost $3 million apiece, says Grant.
He says the hydrogen trucks are not the optimum vehicle, because of their cost, but they'll bridge the gap until fuel cell-powered vehicles, which use a different technology, become more widely available and more affordable.
"We're going to be using them as regular vehicles," says Grant.
These trucks differ from the two other well-known alternative-powered vehicles in that they use only one power source - the internal combustion engine, which is fueled by hydrogen. Hybrid vehicles, which are in use by Novex Couriers of Vancouver, rely on a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine and electricity to move.
Fuel cell vehicles employ a hydrogen-powered fuel cell and electricity.
"One of the things that we're looking at here is learning by doing," says Grant.
Hydro will show people how to fill up and operate hydrogen-powered vehicles. The trucks will be fuelled at Hydro's hydrogen fuelling station in Surrey. Initial plans call for the trucks to be fuelled with 350-bar hydrogen but they may be fuelled in future at the 700-bar (10,000 pounds per square inch) pump.
The station is one of 17 slated to be in use by the 2010 Winter Olympics.
"That (700 bar) is the pressure that the world has to go to," says Grant, referring to the fact that the hydrogen-powered vehicles require a high-pressure gas to be able to travel greater distances before refuelling.
Hydro's station was the first in the world to have a 700-bar pump. Only a few others exist in the world - in California, Germany and Norway.
"We've got the first station, and as we get more we'll have an infrastructure," says Grant.
Through the fuelling stations, Hydro, Fuel Cells Canada and other organizations are trying to develop a Hydrogen Highway. (Hydro initially trademarked the term but later gave the rights to Fuel Cells Canada, because the B.C. electricity provider did not want to manage the project, says Grant.)
Fuelling stations and hydrogen-powered vehicles have a kind of chicken-and-egg relationship, say proponents. Grant and Alison Grigg, who is Fuel Cells Canada's manager of the Hydrogen Highway project, contend that more fuelling stations will help hatch more hydrogen-powered vehicles - and spur the development of new hydrogen-powered technologies such as co-generation electrical plants.
Proponents also stress that safety tests show hydrogen is a safe fuel.
Grant and Joe Wong, manager of infrastructure programs for Powertech Labs, display an aluminum-carbon alloy cylinder, used to store hydrogen, which had been shot by a standard-calibre bullet. The cylinder, manufactured by Dynetek Industries of Calgary, only shows a dent - no hole.
Only an armour-piercing bullet was able to penetrate the cylinder's shell.
During another test, a large block of steel was dropped onto the cylinder. Again, the cylinder did not sustain any damage - but the concrete trough in which it lay had to be repaired.
"We've seen a tremendous expression of interest in (the hydrogen-powered truck program)," says Livio Gambone, Powertech's manager of vehicle programs.
Gambone said Powertech engineers will take out the existing gasoline tanks and install hydrogen tanks, along with superchargers and other technology designed to improve the engine's performance and enable the trucks to travel farther before refuelling.
(Because hydrogen is a cold-burning fuel, it requires more pressure to produce a similar explosiveness to gasoline.)
"We're just bridging the gap (between conventional and non-traditional engines) with technologies that are available to us," says Gambone.
The City of Vancouver and UBC - which is also slated to have a fuelling station - will likely lease vehicles.
Lease rates will be "reasonable" - around $2,000 per month. Exact rates will hinge on the cost of converting the vehicles and how far they can travel.
Hydro will re-invest the fees in the $15-million program, 75 per cent of which is funded by the federal and provincial governments and 25 per cent by industry.
He adds hydrogen vehicles have the potential to develop the Hydrogen Highway more quickly because fuel cell vehicles are still extremely expensive and geared to specific programs.
Hydro is also working with the province to create new regulations surrounding hydrogen-related technology.
"The challenge is perfecting the technology and getting the cost down," says Powertech's Wong.
Hydro and Powertech will also use a fuel cell-powered vehicle as part of Fuel Cells Canada's fuel cell-vehicle program (FCVP). Ford is using the FCVP and several other programs to evaluate its small fleet of 30 fuel cell vehicles.
The Powertech hydrogen vehicles and FCVP will use waste hydrogen that is captured by technology developed by Sacré-Davey Engineering of North Vancouver. Under the Integrated Waste Hydrogen Utilization Project, Sacré-Davey's technology corrals hydrogen that would otherwise go off into the atmosphere, scrubs it and purifies it for re-use.
