Highlights of Fuel Cells Summit VII
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By Steve Hester, Technical Director, Technology Transition Corporation

The annual Fuel Cells Summit was held on May 28 and 29, 2003 at the University of Maryland.  Over 100 government, industry, university, and research attendees at the meeting outlined the latest efforts related to codes and standards development for fuel cells and hydrogen.

The facilitator was Ron Jarnagin, PNNL, and after introductions, the summit opened up with presentations from various stakeholders in the Fuel Cell community. 

Neil Rossmeissl, DOE Office of Hydrogen, Fuel Cells & Infrastructure Technologies, pointed out to the audience that the DOE program partners with various organizations and businesses and has adopted the following goals and directions:

The Federal support for this year’s program has been good and the large increase for next year’s budget was mentioned.  One of the differences of this year’s Summit compared to last year was the very noticeable “buzz” at the meeting related to the greatly expanded Federal hydrogen and fuel cells budget.  The chart below (Figure 1) was used by several of the federal speakers and shows the increased funding and priorities of the DOE program.

             

Figure 1.  DOE Fiscal Year 2004 Budget request for EERE Hydrogen and Fuel Cells

The increases in the various areas of the program are shown in Table 1 below.  One can see that most of the $70 million increase is spread in all of the areas, and that most of the areas have increased relatively equally related to FY 03 levels.

          

Table 1. DOE EERE Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Program Budget comparisons

Rossmeissl further described the DOE program technology validation program.

DOE Technology Validation Technical Goal & Objectives

Goal : Demonstrate and validate integrated hydrogen and fuel cell technologies in a systems context under real operating conditions.

Objectives

John Garbak, DOE (for Sig Gronich) summarized the goals of the DOE program.  President Bush commits $1.7 billion over first 5 years:

He pointed out that this new accelerated, parallel track enables an industry commercialization decision by 2015 and the goal is to have Fuel Cell Vehicles in the Showroom and Hydrogen at Fueling Stations by 2020.  The status of the effort and the targets are shown in Table 2.

Characteristics:

Vehicles

Units

2003

Status

2008

2015

Fuel Cell Stack Durability

Hours

500

2,000

5,000

Range

Miles

 

250

300

Hydrogen Cost

$/kg of H2

4.50

3.00

1.50

Co-Production

 

 

 

 

Cost

$/kw

2,500

1,250

750

Durability

Hours

 

6,000

30,000

Electrical Efficiency of Fuel Cell

%

 

30

32

Table 2. Targets and Status of the DOE Program

One of the major areas of interest that John Garback covered is the “on the street” RFP for demonstrations and infrastructure development.  The RFP is called “Controlled Hydrogen Fleet, Infrastructure Demonstration, and Validation Project.  The following attributes were described:

The RFP encourages teaming where an automobile manufacturer or the energy company will be the prime lead.  The teaming potentials are:

The responses to the RFP are due on August 14, 2003 with selections expected to be announced in the 4th quarter of CY 2003 and after negotiations, awards scheduled for the 1st quarter of CY 2004.

Highlights of the Summit:

Jim Ohi and Russ Hewett of NREL gave a status report on the many efforts related to Domestic Hydrogen Codes and Standards.  Their conclusions were:

1. There has been significant progress on domestic codes and standards

2. Industry support is growing

3. Discussions on comprehensive R&D plan for validation of standards have begun

4. Cooperation between NFPA and ICC is crucial

5. Need to continue to focus on an annual safety, codes, and standards summit meeting as a “Report Card” for the DOE program

There were several speakers that reported the need to continue the coordination of Standards and Codes development activities at UL, NFPA, ICC, ASME, DOT, and many others to ensure that the market for fuel cells and hydrogen gets developed properly, evenly between groups, countries, and jurisdictions.  The NHA Working Groups 8 through 14 are, in fact, doing just that, ensuring coordination and communication between all development activities.

Cathy Gregoire-Padro of National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Bob Mauro of Partnership for Advancing the Transition to Hydrogen (PATH) gave an overview and status of the international Standards and Codes efforts. 

Cathy reported that the standards, codes, and regulations activities in Europe, North America, and Japan are advancing at different speeds, and although heading in the same direction (predominately) they are driven by different and sometimes conflicting motivations.  She questioned what role the DOE program should play and tasked the audience to find ways that the US can better influence the outcomes.  She finished with the following challenge for the workshop:

Bob Mauro gave a short overview of PATH’s partners (the hydrogen associations of Canada, Japan and the U.S.) and mission (to create a real and virtual global community of interest in hydrogen).  He gave the following international and domestic observations.

Observations: International Situation

Observations: Domestic Situation

He ended by questioning the future of the current SDO activity and voluntary industry standards.  He asked the audience to ponder what form the expanded government role in Codes and Standards should take, how the U.S. should engage the E.U. on standards, codes, and regulations, and what our response would be if Japan initiates a major push for fuel cell GTR’s?

Anne-Marie Borbely-Bartis, Battelle at DOE, reported on the Distributed Energy Road Show.  She explained that a “DE Road Show” is a one-day training for fire marshals, building code inspectors, utility engineers, city & county planning staff.

The show covers topics like the installation, fueling, interconnection, permitting, and safe operation of any customer-sited energy technology including fuel cells, hydrogen, methanol, and other “DE” products.  It gives participants hands-on experience with operating demonstration units at the training site.  The intent is that an attendee will know:

She mentioned that in some cases the attendance includes CE credits.  The Road Show has an established web site at www.eere.energy.gov/der/roadshow.html.

The Road Show has a goal of 150 locations over the first three years and to date has been conducted in the following locations:

Bruce Kinzey, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, gave an overview of the DOE Hydrogen Safety Program.  Bruce discussed the need for a safety program as it is needed to prevent any and all accidents involving hydrogen to the greatest extent possible, including during the research, development and demonstration phases of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies supported with DOE funding because over the long term, these technologies will be placed in consumers’ hands.  He pointed out that the public perception of hydrogen safety is critical to prevent overly restrictive requirements (everyone wants a level playing field among fuels) and to maintain insurability.

The goal and objectives of the DOE Hydrogen Safety program are:

Goal: Ensure safety in the operation, handling, and use of hydrogen systems for all Department of Energy funded projects. 

Objectives:

Karen Hall (nee Miller), National Hydrogen Association, presented the status of the ISO/TC 197 activities, Hydrogen Technologies.  The scope of this Standard is: Standardization in the field of systems and devices for the production, storage, transport, measurement and use of hydrogen.  The impressive international membership on ISO/TC 197 is:

Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Libya, the Netherlands, Norway, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, Sweden, Switzerland  and the United States of America

Austria, the Czech Republic, China, Hungary, India, Israel, Jamaica, Serbia and Montenegro, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom

There are two standards published under this technical committee to date; ISO 13984:1999, that covers Liquid hydrogen - Land vehicle fuelling system interface, and ISO 14687:1999/Cor. 2001, that covers Hydrogen fuel - Product specifications.  The Committee has two standards completed and soon to be published; Airport hydrogen fuelling facility (ISO/PAS 15594) and Basic considerations for the safety of hydrogen systems (ISO/TR 15916).

Karen discussed the cooperation the committee has with seven other Technical Committees and the large number of codes and standards SDO bodies internationally.  She offered that anyone who wishes to be involved or to become a member of an ISO TC 197 working group, needs to contact the administrator of the ISO/TC 197 mirror committee in their country.  In the USA, you can contact Ms. Debbie Angerman at dangerman@cganet.com.  More information about ISO/TC 197 activities can be found on the NHA web site www.HydrogenUS.org.

The last afternoon of the Summit was spent in two breakout sessions, one involved with Hydrogen, the other with Fuel Cells.  There were lively discussions and the output was a list of concerns and suggestions of what the DOE, the industry and individual standards and codes could do to meet the aggressive DOE goals for hydrogen and fuel cells.  Due to lack of time the results of the separate sessions were not seen by the combined audience.  The results of these two sessions are to be published by DOE shortly.

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