May Updates from CHBC’s Development Specialist
During the course of the month of May, the following notable works were performed by Cory Shumaker. This summary only includes information that would be found valuable for CHBC members. Meeting and event summaries are meant to be published in the CHBC newsletter or website as felt necessary.
Attended the International Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Conference on May 14-15 in Trondheim, Norway. The summary of the event is as follows:
The first International Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Conference was held at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway last month to touch on the various progresses of hydrogen and fuel cells in various market sectors.
Professor Johan Hustad of NTNU started the conference by stating the university is performing various research topics on hydrogen and fuel cell technology. There are a number of centers for environmentally friendly energy on campus with 20-30 companies as partners. This is part of the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA).
Bjorn Simonsen, NEL began the discussions by talking about the recent improvements in PEM technology leading to cost reductions, bringing down the price of electrolysis to the levels of small scale reforming. This will allow it to be cost competitive with fossil fuels. They see on a 2025 timeframe that the cost of PEM will be equal to the cost of Alkaline for electrolysis.
In Norway, there is a $.05/kWh electricity price at a bus depot dispensing hydrogen at $6.50/kg. By using tube trailers that can hold 1,500kg of hydrogen per truck, they can minimize equipment onside and provide up to 3,000kg/day to fill up to 150 buses. With an order of 1,000 buses the price can be 350,000 euros (~$415,000) which will be competitive with diesel for TCO. The total market for buses in Europe is 350,000 buses with an annual turnover of 25,000 buses.
Norwegian grocer Asko will be operating a hydrogen fuel cell truck in Trondheim, Norway with a hydrogen station using an electrolyzer and 3 dispensers by Nel. They believe, at scale, fuel cell buses are the cheapest solution for public transport.
Nel will be the equipment supplier for Nikola for their roll out of heavy duty fuel cell electric trucks in two phases. First phase will be two demo stations in the second half of 2018 and into 2019. Providing 2 alkaline electrolyzers each 1,000kg/day with two dispensers. Phase 2 is 28 commercial stations with production of 8-32 tons/day from 2019 to 2021 using 700 bar.
The utility company TronderEnergi is working on a number of pilot projects including in hydrogen. They have different off-grid projects around Europe involving power-to-power of hydrogen using electrolysis. Kerry-Ann Adamson, 4th Energy Wave mentioned Utsira, a small remote island community, which has been powered by hydrogen and fuel cells since 2004 by StatoilHydro. There are 10 households on the island receiving power from fuel cells with hydrogen produced from a wind-to-hydrogen system.
Gier Brekke, Statkraft discussed their involvement in zero emission transport and construction site projects. 10 public agencies have come together for zero emission construction sites, 50 billion euros will be spent in the coming years. This will be a really large market to come in this segment. This is a market that does not need subsidies in the long term and has great potential.
Federico Zenith, SINTEF is focused on zero emission freight. A quarter of railway lines are electrified in the world (USA is 1%, Switzerland is 99%). North America will be the most important market for hydrogen and fuel cells with growing numbers of freight moving on rail in the US. SINTEF studied the Kansas to Los Angeles train line with 12,000 train movements per year, it is privately owned by BNSF. It is very flat but has high temperatures in Mojave Desert that make it challenging for fuel cells. Comparison criteria for hydrogen freight trains is based on equivalent annual cost, benefit-cost ratio, payback period, and up-front investment. There is a good business case for hydrogen fuel cell freight trains as soon as 2020 for the Nordland line in Norway. This is due to the high cost of electricity. As for the US line, it would be cheaper to do a catenary system due to low cost electricity.
Attilio Pigneri, the Hydrogen Utility, a company in Australia talked about the now multiple players delivering MW-scale electrolysis solutions. In 2016, Australia saw a massive backout in parts of the country that had parts of the grid that were down for four days. This makes a case for more distributed generation. There are a number of business models coming into play in the 2020s for Australia and they are building out hydrogen refueling stations. They are working on locally manufactured OEM-integrated FCEV solutions for waste collection trucks and buses. Some agriculture and mining equipment are already autonomous and are a great opportunity for fuel cells since they already utilize electric motors.
Dr. Steffen Møller-Holst, SINTEF, talked about how Norway will play a large roll in green hydrogen in the future. Hydropower in Norway has a potential of 214.2TWh per year and the theoretical potential of wind power is 4GW. Connection costs to the grid account for almost half the cost of a wind operation. Therefore, production and storage of hydrogen where the wind electricity is produced will be a great opportunity. The Nordic Green Certificate Market (Norway and Sweden) is being created with the aim of putting 28.4 TWh/yr of new renewables online (wind and hydro). Norway produces 10X more energy than it consumes with mostly natural gas. The country could export 11,000 tons of liquid hydrogen per week by 2050 from natural and renewables. There will be a pilot scale project in operation by 2020. A national plan for alternative fuels is being developed and hydrogen stations currently amount to 8 in operation with 4 new coming in 2018. Norway is aiming for 30 HRS by 2022 and 50-100 HRS by 2025.
Fiskerstrand in 2016 won a bid to develop and design a 1MW hydrogen fuel cell ferry with help from SINTEF, who is also working with Viking Cruise ships on their fuel cell ambitions.
Roger Sæther, ASKO stated in their fleet they have 600 trucks on the road each day. Their motivation for using hydrogen is to reduce their carbon footprint. They want to be sustainable and climate neutral by 2020. They are willing to accept less and longer paybacks on environmental investments. Wind power will provide 75% of AKSO’s needs; solar power will provide 15% of their energy consumption. Battery solutions for trucks won’t work due to the range requirements. They are working with Scania and Hydrogenics on 4 fuel cell trucks that will begin demonstration, one in late 2018 and the other three coming next year. When they began using hydrogen for forklifts no one could deliver hydrogen so they were forced to make it onsite with an electrolyzer. The hydrogen production they have on site is 320kg/day at both 350 bar and 700 bar. ASKO currently has 100 fuel cell forklifts with Toyota and Plug Power as the suppliers with performance and efficiency that has been better than expected. The safety on the equipment is very good, the technology is mature, and it will be seen how reliable the systems will be over time. ASKO takes a slightly different approach to hydrogen safety, they focus on the safety of all the components, telling users what to do but do not the focus on “worse case situations”.
Tomas Tronstad, HYON a joint venture between PowerCell, Hexagon Composites, and Nel, is focused on fuel cells for ships in maritime applications. Nel is working on reducing hydrogen fueling times for ferry size vessels down to 15 minutes. Magnum and titan tanks from Hexagon are being used for marine applications and are being studied by the Norwegian Maritime Authority. The Titan tank is 12m long with 8,400 liters water volume at 250bar with a capacity of 150kg. Large scale hydrogen production with electrolysis combined with cheap renewable electricity prices will see hydrogen costs go down to less than $2/kg. HYON makes fuel cell containers with 600kW of fuel cell power inside, that is less in size than the diesel equivalent.
Laurence Grand Clemente, PersEE discussed the IMO’s decision that by 2050 NOx, SOx, and GHG emissions should be reduced by 50-70%. Since the life of a vessel is 30 years, there must be a change in the design of the vessels starting in 2020 which creates an opportunity for alternative fuels. There is now a market pull for hydrogen on vessels but there are no codes and regulations to address the maritime market. Norway has been pushing for regulations about LNG since 2000, this created the IGF code but it does not include hydrogen. The next step is to work with Norway on pushing for regulations on hydrogen with the IMO.
Shanna D. Knights, Ballard stated they now have 63 fuel cell buses in 10 cities in Europe; the world market will have 1,000 FCBs by 2020. Ballard has been heavily active in China with their stacks in 500 DongFeng trucks. Ballard is also getting involved in rail working on a commuter rail project with Siemens using a 200kw fuel cell running by 2021. In the maritime space Ballard is involved with R&D work by Viking Cruises, Royal Caribbean Cruises with ABB, and HYBRIDship.
Randi Mette Hegseth, Statoil stated they are looking at maritime solutions for hydrogen on cruise ships. Statoil (now Equinor) believes that of renewable solutions hydrogen is the cheapest way to achieve ambitious decarbonizing targets.
Hans-Christian Koch-Wintervoll, DNV GL AS talked about how the IMO sets standards for the shipping industry with the IGF code covering low flashpoint fuels (such as hydrogen) but only covers natural gas for ICEs and boilers at the moment. There are more concerns with liquified hydrogen than compressed hydrogen. Concerns about enclosed spaces and more complicated safety issues go along with liquid hydrogen. There are still many concerns about hydrogen on ships, either liquified or compressed. A lot of work still needs to be done. In 2024, there will be a new part E added to the IGF code for fuel cell installations on vessels. This is handled by the subcommittee CCC (Carriage of Cargoes and Containers). For hydrogen specific requirements it will not happen until at least 2028. DNV GL aims to push this forward to address the challenges of hydrogen, encouraging the IMO to adopt regulations soon.
Adamo Screnci, ThyssenKrupp stated in the future, electricity will be as cheap as $0.01/kWh by 2019 (Mexico). China is going to spend $493 billion on green energy by 2020. TCO for large scale electrolysis is 0.25 euro/kg of hydrogen. ThyssenKrupp can produce 60MW of electrolysis without investment.
Prof Ingrid Schjolberg, NTNU is working for the International Energy Agency and in charge of the Hydrogen Implementing Agreement Task 39: Hydrogen in Maritime Transport. The need for emissions reduction in ships was the impetus for the task creation. Vessel container traffic is expected to triple by 2035. Smart vessels of the future will need advanced power management systems and alterative fuels. Overall goal is to provide knowhow and research on the use of hydrogen and fuel cells in marine vessels to affect the IMO regulations for shipping.
Thomas Walter, H2 Energy is a producer and seller of renewable hydrogen in Switzerland and providing hydrogen for the COOP hydrogen trucks. COOP has a company initiative to green their fleet. The TCO for a diesel truck is similar to the TCO of a hydrogen truck in Switzerland with the incentives the government provides, therefore there is already a business case for fuel cell trucks. COOP trucks have a required range of 400km, which is a perfect application for fuel cells. The fuel cell trucks demonstrated use a 100kW fuel cell and a 120kWh battery. So far 15,000km have been driven as a full replacement of a 34-ton diesel truck for distribution of goods. Cost reduction for fuel cell trucks depends on the reduction of the fuel cell system and the price of hydrogen. COOP will have 3-5 trucks delivered by the end of this year with 30-50 coming during next year. Switzerland will have 3 HRS by the end of the year. To close the conference Oystein Ulleberg, IFE made a bold statement saying hydrogen can be produced as cheap is 3 euros/kg onsite. More information on their program Mobility Zero Emission Energy Systems can be found at mozees.no.