Hydrogen-powered buses on the way before 2010

Staff Reporter, The Province
Published: Friday, August 03, 2007

BC Transit has inked a $46.4-million contract to produce the world's first fleet of buses powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon announced Friday that New Flyer Industries of Winnipeg will make 20 buses, due to hit the road by the end of 2009.

The innovation comes with a hefty price tag, averaging more than $2 million per vehicle.

Portions of the project will also be handled by ISE Corporation of San Diego, which will make the hybrid drive system; Burnaby's Ballard Power Systems, responsible for making the fuel-cell modules; and Dynetek Industries of Calgary, which will design a hydrogen storage system.

The buses are said to have a range of 500 kilometres, a top speed of 90 kilometres an hour and a life expectancy of 20 years.

Falcon touted the project as part of the province's commitment to reduce B.C.'s greenhouse gas emissions by one-third by 2020.

"These buses produce no smog-creating emissions and no greenhouse gas emissions, and they can be twice as efficient as internal combustion engines," said Falcon in a statement.

The buses are expected to be showcased at the 2010 Winter Olympics and will initially be based in Whistler.

They are part of the Liberal government's commitment to the development of a so-called "hydrogen highway" to help reduce carbon emissions that contribute to global warming.





HYDROGEN BUS FLEET CONTRACT AWARDED

Ministry of Transportation | News Release

VICTORIA – BC Transit has awarded a $46.4-million contract to build the world’s first fleet of hydrogen fuel cell buses, Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon announced today.

New Flyer Industries of Winnipeg will be the manufacturer of the 20 buses, with delivery by the end of 2009. The low-floor buses will have a range of 500 km, a top speed of 90 km per hour and a life expectancy of 20 years. The three main sub-contractors on this bus fleet project are ISE Corporation of San Diego, which is responsible for the hybrid drive system; Ballard Power Systems of Burnaby, which will provide the fuel cell modules; and Dynetek Industries of Calgary, which will work on the hydrogen storage system.

“In the speech from the throne in February, we pledged to reduce B.C.’s greenhouse gas emissions by 33 per cent by 2020,” said Falcon. “These hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles represent an important step, as these buses produce no smog-creating emissions and no greenhouse gas emissions, and they can be twice as efficient as internal combustion engines. The life cycle costs for fuel cell buses are expected to be lower than existing internal combustion engine technology.”

“The fuel cell buses will provide the cleanest and most efficient propulsion technology in the long term,” said Kevin Mahoney, chair of BC Transit. “This will help BC Transit improve British Columbia’s quality of life by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving the rider’s overall experience.”

In November 2006, the Province dedicated an initial $10 million for development of the hydrogen fuel cell bus concept. The federal Public Transit Capital Trust fund committed $45 million to the fuel cell bus fleet and accompanying hydrogen fuelling stations. BC Transit will cover the remaining $34 million of the overall funding for the day-to-day operations of this new bus fleet for a period of up to five years.

When operational in late 2009, the new fleet will initially be based in Whistler and will be a very visible part of public transportation during the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Well 20 buses won't make a dent in BC's GHG emissions but it is an excellent precedent.

The Ballard fuel cells they will use have already been put through the washer in 30+ hydrogen buses utilized in the CUTE (clean urban transportation for Europe) project in Europe. They have already racked up more than million kilometres of revenue service and have carried more than 12 million passengers. The buses used in that demonstration project were retrofits of Mercedes-Benz Citaro diesels and were certainly not designed from the ground up to be hydrogen fuel-cell powered. Never the less they, performed very well, were safe, the drivers were enthused or ambiguous and the general consensus was that operationally they were "fine", as good or better than the diesels they were used to. "Fine" is exactly what we want from a technology used in buses. The glitzy part of hybrid buses is their total life-cycle environmental costs, which were found to be as much as 95% lower than the baseline diesels.

The critical factor for the total life-cycle environmental cost of hydrogen buses is how they produce the hydrogen at the fuelling stations. There are two ways: electrolysis and steam reformation using natural gas as a feed-stock. If electricity in the grid is derived from renewables then the hydrogen buses are just amazing. Even if the electricity is derived from coal or oil, you are still ahead versus conventional diesel buses. However if you manufacture hydrogen from natural gas then the hydrogen buses can actually be worse than diesels so far as greenhouse gas emissions and the amount of primary energy derived from non-renewable sources. Once again, repeat after me: hydrogen is a storage medium. How you produce it makes all the difference in the world.

In BC, with our hydropower and other renewables on the horizon, we should be absolutely fine. The 20 hydrogen buses will make a nice impression during the Olympics. But to make much of a difference we will have to start buying them by the hundreds while getting the old junkers off the road.

Lastly, we shouldn't knock diesel any more. The new buses that Translink is taking delivery of in Vancouver are 95% cleaner than the ones we took delivery of even a couple of years ago. The difference? Diesel particulate filters and the phasing out of low-sulphur #1 grade diesel fuel for ultra-low sulphur diesel. Across the board these new diesel buses are better than the boxy early 1990s New Flyers. However the hybrid version of the new D40LF is even better.

(old) New Flyer D40LF vs (new) New Flyer D40LF vs (new) New Flyer DE40LF Hybrid
Carbon Monoxide (grams per second): 1.94 vs 0.34 vs 0.21
Hydrocarbons (g/s): 0.46 vs 0.035 vs 0.018
NO (g/s): 12.31 vs 2.3 vs 1.21
NOx (g/s): 13.89 vs 6.83 vs 5.2
Particulate matter (g/s): 1.2 vs 0.4 vs 0.2

Good post, thanks.

Hydrogen can also be captured as a by-product of other processes (I don't know if that falls under one of your two categories). I'm guessing that's where our hydrogen will come from. See link (http://www.sdtc.ca/en/news/media_releases/media_10132005.pdf) which mentions 2010 transportation and powering up to 20,000 vehicles from a sodium chlorate manufacturing plant.

One thing I notice about the Nova buses is they belch a lot of black smoke on hard acceleration - certainly more than any of Translink's New Flyers or those older GM buses. But I guess that's not really telling anymore as to how much pollution they emit?

Interesting facts from the Sun today:

- Hydrogen bus: $2.1 million
- Diesel bus: $500,000
- Trolley bus: $1.4 million

- Eight hydrogen tanks will hold about 60 kilograms of hydrogen, on which the bus can travel 500 kilometres. But with current hydrogen prices between $10 and $20 per kilogram, a day's fill-up could be as much as $1,200.

Any pictures of the buses yet?