 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Hey, hello, and welcome to Stand on the Energy Man here, a week before Christmas and all through the studio. Anyway, welcome to Stand on the Energy Man, I'm Stan Osserman from the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technology. I'm here in Honolulu working for the state on my lunch hour, so we can talk to guests, and I don't have to charge the state any of my own personal time. They get me for free here over at Think Tech. We'll be talking energy things, all things energy in. Today we have a great guest calling in from California, from the University of California at LA. University of Southern California, LA. Anyway, that's been working on hydrogen for quite a while, and in fact, I've actually been over to see some of their work and didn't know him, but now I'm connected to him. So Michael Dre is our guest today, calling in, and Michael, good to have you on the show. Thanks for being here. Aloha from Cal State LA, Hydrogen Research, Stan. Glad to meet you. Nice shirt. I put this on in your honor. We love it when you do that. Michael, tell us a little bit about how you got into doing what you're doing over there in the hydrogen world and some of the things that we'd find interesting about what you do. Well, Stan, my background has always been in power. My early career was in power plant operations and chemistry, and eventually later in life, went to law school, and I've worked for oil companies and energy installations around the U.S. over the years. But I saw this opportunity here at Cal State LA for this hydrogen research and fueling facility and was retained to get the station online. The station was a little bit in peril as it was originally constructed, but we got it righted and got the ship going here, and we've been online now for several years. Great. And, yeah, I noticed that you had a legal background when I was looking at your stuff, and it's interesting. We have a lot of folks here in the energy world in Hawaii that also have law degrees, and that actually helps out quite a bit because we end up working with the legislature and making things happen. And there's no doubt that California leads the charge on hydrogen. We've got a lot of vehicles over there up to like 5,000 now and 38 stations or so. But you guys are the leader. We bow down to you and bow down to the east and look towards California for all things hydrogen so we can copy you because we don't have the resources. But thanks for all the stuff you're doing over there. And we've got some images that we can bring up, and the first one we can bring up is a bunch of cars that you guys have. Was it a rideshare program? Oh, that's right, Stan. We've recently deployed, just a matter of the past several weeks, the initial wave of, no pun intended, five wave cars. They're called wave cars as far as the fee is waved to use these cars for the first two hours. So we're deploying these in conjunction with a tech company out of Santa Monica so that students, faculty, and staff on the campus can actually drive these cars. We've got 30,000 students nearly on campus now. Parking is a problem. We're right at the intersection of the intersection of two major highways near downtown LA. So these cars are allowing folks to drive them for free for the first two hours. And then after that, it's a nominal fee, I think, of $6 an hour. So this is enabling exposure, wider exposure of the technology to the public. And these are all Tucson's, Hyundai Tucson's. Yeah, they're great. I think I told you I was at that conference a couple of years ago, and the Tucson is actually a nice vehicle. I was really impressed. I don't like to tell my Toyota friends that the Hyundai was my favorite, but the Mariah is my second favorite, but the Hyundai actually was impressive. Had a lot of get up and go. Yes. Was really peppy, really quiet. The cockpit was really well laid out. The vehicle itself felt really solid on the road and felt really comfortable. And we don't see any of the vehicles here. We have some rise on Island, but I'm trying to get Hyundai to bring some vehicles in because I really like their vehicles. They're good too. And I think if you have Toyota and Hyundai and they can get Hyundai in there too, we'll be up giving you a run for your money with vehicles on the road. But our local Toyota dealers have stood up a station over here. So we only have one commercially available station in the state of Hawaii right now. And then a couple of us have some military ones around, but we're getting there. We're trying to give you a run for your money, but we learned everything from you. So the next slide we have. We're all J2601. Thanks to you guys and looking at everything. The next image we have is the kind of behind the scenes of the station. And most people don't realize. And when I show people our station and I show them this viewpoint, I say, look, what you're looking at on this footprint is basically just the same size as a regular gas station, except that it's the entire oil field and oil pipeline and oil tanker and oil refinery and everything. And it's all sitting behind the wall here in a 20-foot container and a couple of compressors and chillers. I said, this is the entire process to make hydrogen on a clean water and electricity and totally carbon-free. And it all fits in the same footprint as a regular gas station. So maybe you can describe some of that equipment there. Yes, yes. Yeah, this station is a little bit unique stand in that the designers incorporated a visitor's gallery. So we're one of the most unique stations around so far as we can bring groups of the public inside the wall and show them the various components. And what you're looking at is probably on the right-hand side, the container that you mentioned. That's the electrolysis unit. That's built by a company called Hydrogenics. It's a alkaline-type electrolyzer where we take renewable electricity, pump it into water and split that water into its chemical components, oxygen and hydrogen. We jettison the oxygen, the atmosphere, but of course collect all the hydrogen, purify it to 5-9's purity. And then you'll see that there are several compressors in the station shop there. There's one in the very center. That's a low-pressure compressor, which takes that hydrogen from the electrolyzer at 150 psi roughly, up to about 6,000, and then lays it up in storage tanks. That's enough to fuel one of these light-duty vehicles halfway. But to accomplish a full fueling and to get the maximum range out of the vehicle, we have to compress it further with the big blue compressors in the shop there. Those take the hydrogen upwards of to 12,000 pounds per square inch. Final step is chilling the hydrogen with the coolers to the right. We chill that hydrogen to subzero temperatures. In our case, minus 20. The newer stations go to minus 40, and then to the dispenser itself. Let's talk a little bit about why we chill it and why we do that, because most people aren't familiar with gasses in general, especially we're used to pumping liquid fuel into our tanks. But when you're pumping a gas under pressure, you have some different things to think about. Can you explain to everyone how that works? Well, sure. Under the gas walls, when you take gas and you compress it, you generate heat. That's the simplest way of describing it. It runs the hydrogen. Also, hydrogen has some unique chemical properties, and that's a great coolant. And that's why it's used in some turbo generators as cooling, as a cooling medium, actually, because it absorbs heat from its surroundings like nothing else. So when we're pumping this hydrogen into these vehicles under high pressure, the tanks themselves are made of polymers. Some are metal lined with substances such as aluminum, but the new Type IV tanks are almost completely polymeric, and then they're wrapped with carbon fiber. Well, those tanks are cured somewhere in the temperature range of plus 300 degrees Celsius in these ovens, right? So we don't want to overheat the tanks, and we worry about the cyclic effects of repeated fuel wings and heating and cooling the tanks. So the magic number on a hydrogen vehicle, a light-duty vehicle is 85 degrees Celsius. We do not want to exceed that. So all of our station programming is designed, all in fact, all the stations are designed, that if you start to approach those temperatures, the station will automatically throttle back the fueling rate, and will actually terminate the fueling if you achieve 85 degrees Celsius. But typically, our temperatures run about 40 to 50 degrees Celsius during normal fueling. Again, we don't want to weaken the polymeric structure of the tanks. That's the whole rationale. Okay, and then also we follow the protocols to keep the tank cool enough that we can measure the gas as a standard unit of measure, because if you have a gas and it heats up, it also expands. So if you pumped a bunch of hot gas into the tank, the driver drives away and a half hour later, they got three-quarters of a tank instead of a full tank, and most of that's just from getting back to ambient temperature. So the chilling gives you a standard fill and also gives you the safety factor on the tanks. That's absolutely right. That's a good point, Stan. I can tell you're well versed in some of these technical issues are very involved, and I'm impressed that you realize that, yes, you want to get a consistent state of charge on those tanks also. That's correct. And controlling the temperature narrowly in a narrow band allows you to get closer to that. And here in Hawaii at our regular gas pumps, the Department of Agriculture puts a little stamp on the side of each pump that says you get a standard measure. How's that being done in California with the hydrogen stations as they're dispensing a gas instead of a fluid? It's being done the same way, Stan. Our county and our state waits and measures folks who are responsible for certifying everything from the scale at your local butcher shop to your gasoline pumps also test the accuracy of the fuel delivered by these hydrogen dispensers. And in fact, we were the first in the world certified by waits and measures agency to sell to the public by the kilogram. That was an epic achievement for us. In fact, let's throw the next two slides up in kind of rapid succession. We have one slide there that shows the two cars in front of the station. And then the very next one is that first sale, if I'm not mistaken, where you dispense the first commercially distributed fuel. So the next slide shows you with the receipt there from the first one. And you point out too, it's actually a Volkswagen. Is a hydrogen fuel cell Volkswagen vehicle was the first customer? That's absolutely right. They had they had flown over a fleet of fuel cell vehicles for the LA auto show back in late, late 2013. And they had negotiated with us secretly to fuel those same vehicles once they got here on the ground. So, yeah, the Germans very good to work with. We fueled not only the Passat, but they also brought Audi is an A7H Trons, which are beautiful cars. And we also fueled those. So, yeah, we had just been certified and we were waiting for that first customer and happened to be Volkswagen. All right, we're going to take a quick break here, Michael. We'll be back in 60 seconds. Aloha, I want to invite all of you to talk story with John Wahee every other Monday here at Think Tech Hawaii. And we have special guests like Professor Colin Moore from the University of Hawaii, who joins us from time to time to talk about the political happenings in this state. Please join us every other Monday. Aloha. I just walked by and I said, what's happening? And they told me they were making music. Hey, welcome back to Stand Energy Man here a week before Christmas 2018. And we're talking to Michael Dre from California. He's probably one of the more experienced individuals we've had on the show to talk about the actual practical application of dispensing hydrogen and, you know, getting it established. And as we said earlier, Hawaii is recognized as one of the also one of the leading states doing hydrogen work. California is far away doing a lot more putting a lot more state money. I think they do a hundred million bucks a year to help put stations online. They have a great gentleman working in the governor's office that that's really good. Whenever there's a new station standing up, it's nice that he calls down to the county offices and says, hey, I'm from the governor's office and I'm here to tell you that we're watching the station go up and we're really excited about it. So if you have any issues, give me a call. And when somebody from the governor's office calls down to your local community and tells you're permitting and fire marshal and he's interested, things seem to go a little quicker. And we have this issue with permits here in Hawaii. They don't go as quick as most people like. So Michael, the next shot we have coming up is actually some of the other equipment that you feel besides cars. And it's a neat piece of equipment that we've actually looked at purchasing over here. So the next slide shows the, I think it's a GTM Lux for GPAC and the unit, it's in the back of the pickup truck. It's just a single unit, but I think you can put up to three of them in the back of the truck. Can you kind of tell us how that works and why you would want to have that in the truck? Well, sure, those units are very useful in the event that a vehicle runs out of fuel on the road. And it happens. Sometimes people will have emergencies. Sometimes they'll miscalculate their trip planning. For whatever reason, if a customer or driver runs out of fuel on the road, you obviously can't just take a gallon of fuel and pour it into it. So you need a platform where you can deliver hydrogen under pressure. And these GPACs, and there's a later version of these out now with more capacity, but they typically, they can be fitted with a compressor if they want to boost the pressure, but we could fuel them to say roughly, even without a compressor, you can fill them with say, 5,000 PSI. And that's enough to where you can just let the hydrogen cascade through a hose and through the nozzle connected to the vehicle receptacle. All you really need in these scenarios stands a way to get a kilo or so into the vehicle. Enough to get you along to the next fueling station. So that's an innovative device, a lecture. We've supported them by fueling it. We've benefited from this by being able to share it with the public and add it to our portfolio of research, per se. Applied research and fueling different devices and figuring out the nuts and bolts of these vehicles. Yeah, it's a single kilogram. I'd get you at least 50 to 75 miles anyway, right? That's right. That's right. And here in California, if you're within range of a station, you've got to just calculate your mileage and just have to do a little planning. I drove one of these vehicles, one of the first ones, one of the first two, that I've lost for several years. That just takes a little, there's a little learning curve. But once you get used to it, it's no big deal. Yeah, because, you know, again, when you only have one or two stations in the state the size of California, you do have to do some planning. But the more stations that come online, the less you have to think about it. You know, the battery plug-in guys have the range anxiety thing. And when you first get started, you still have the same issue with the hydrogen vehicles. Right, right. And I'd be interested to know, Stan, that this week three new stations came online in one week in California. That's terrific. There's a new station that, yeah, several have opened. And that's almost unheard of to get three stations commissioned and up online in the same week. They put one in Citrus Heights, Palo Alto, and LAX all this week. So that brings a total amount of 39 public stations. Perfect. And if we could get three stations in Honolulu and two on the Big Island, we'd be rolling. So we need this five for the two islands that are really getting into hydrogen right now. I don't know what's with Maui. They seem to just not want to do hydrogen right now, but they should be. And there's another piece of equipment that we have, a picture that we'll bring up on the screen here. And this one I'm not too familiar with, but as you mentioned, you know, we look at hydrogen as a very transportable fuel as a medium versus batteries. So this trailer here does what? This is another Luxor GTM product. This particular trailer has capacity for about 80 kilos of hydrogen at six pounds, roughly 6,000 pounds per square inch or 350 bar. That's the convention. But in this particular application, this trailer can be pulled to remote cell phone towers where they've installed station areas, fuel cells as emergency power supplies. So the power gets knocked out of the grid, you know, for first responders or just for general communication. It's important to keep those cell phone towers operable. So with this trailer, they can go out and they can fuel those sites. The telecommunications folks in California use the hydrogen a lot in their cell towers as backup. I mean, could you give us a rough order of magnitude of how many are out there? You know, I can't. That's not really in my wheelhouse. But I know that IGX does supply quite a bit of hydrogen, not just in California, but across the nation to these types of towers. Okay. So essentially that trailer has expanded GPAC on a trailer instead of in the back of the truck. Yes. And what are the dilemmas on the legal side? What is the Department of Transportation? At what point did they start looking at the transportable versions of hydrogen dispensers in a different vein than a tube trailer, say? Well, traditionally, you know, the Department of Transportation has weight limits. That's one aspect, but also pressure limits on, you know, how much pressure you can put in a trailer as you told it around the highways. I just read an article that that was like 350 bar for a long time. But just in the past couple of weeks, I noticed that an article where one of the tank manufacturers was actually awarded approval to move hydrogen at something like eight or 900 bar, which is fantastic because the more pressure you can have in the hydrogen when you deliver that hydrogen to a site, a fueling site, the less compression you have to perform on that gas. Exactly. Well, that's great. There are breakthroughs being made in that area. Some just moved just very recently. Okay. Yeah, because we're, you know, we're looking at hydrogen vehicles over here for the first time and, you know, getting our safety checks. I know you guys have small control checks and things. We haven't even got all the standards stood up by our regulatory agencies locally to start talking about the vehicles, let alone moving the hydrogen around. But transporting the hydrogen is going to be important. Like you said, until the stations are out there, you need some way of getting some hydrogen to vehicles or remote sites. So we have the next. Right. That's right. Next one coming up, let me see. We've got some of the things and I really got to give you kudos for this, too. You've talked a lot about having the gallery there at the station and things and the outreach that the university is doing is critical. We've recognized that as vitally important here in the state just to get people exposed to the technology. So right now we have your display vehicle up with your placards and everything that you're doing outreach with. Can you tell us a little bit about your outreach program? Absolutely, Stan. That's a big part of our program here. We're not just the regular fueling station. We mentioned that we do applied research. We do public outreach, bringing members of the public. Everything from school kids, grade school children, high school students, college students, folks from industry. We've had about 10,000 visitors here the last two years. So what we're able to do here is take them on a tour of the facility, show them all the basic components of the station, how they integrate together. And then we also educate them about the properties of hydrogen. We teach them about safety. We teach them about the vehicles. So it's not uncommon for guests to walk away from the station after one of these tours and say, I had no idea. If I knew about this, I would get one of these cars in a heartbeat. But you're right. Public outreach and education is critical because a lot of people still don't know about the technology. Right. And the next slide we have coming up is I think one of those where one of your folks is educating some students. And I'll have a comment here because we do a little bit of outreach too. Rachel James and I went to an event with about 150 students attending in groups of about 40 or 45 each, 50. And the first group that came in, I said, how many of you have ever heard of the word Hindenburg? And only four hands went up. And I just started clapping and said, thank God we don't teach much history anymore. Because in my generation, you say hydrogen and it's Hindenburg and H-bomb. And you got an uphill battle from there. Actually, you're right. I understand because I used to do the same thing. And what I discovered was that the student, I mean, I'm dating myself here, but the students today don't even really know about the Hindenburg. So I don't raise it as an issue anymore because it's niche. And the fact is that we have so many ways of mitigating the risk of hydrogen now that there's really no comparison. So we just don't even bring it up anymore. It's old news, old news. I took my staff to Proton on site up in Connecticut when we were doing an East Coast tour. And a lot of people don't realize that we've been making hydrogen and submarines for decades. I mean, that's how the big nuclear subs and stuff get their oxygen is using electrolysis. And they throw the hydrogen away. Now, as a military guy, if you've ever tried to get the military to certify any piece of equipment, to go on an airplane or a nuclear submarine, it's an incredibly rigorous process to get it all safety certified. So it's just amazing that the safety that's built in is just unbeatable. And when people realize it, like you say, they just go, wow, if I only knew. And so we try and make those points really clear. So let me see. You also got some international groups coming through too, right? The next slide, I think, shows some of them. Sure. We get lots of folks from all around the world, from Europe, Asia. Recently, we've been getting a lot of interested folks from China. China has been very aggressive lately in pursuing fuel cells. Of course, they have terrible pollution problems. So they're familiar with the concerns, the public health concerns. So we welcome them and we share whoever it is, Stan, comes from around the planet. We tell them what we know. We're not in this to compete because we're a government entity. You understand us. Our duty is to the public. So to inform and educate the public. So we share this information with folks from China, Korea, Japan, all over Europe and so forth. We also take international students here as part of our engineering college. They work on their masters and their PhD programs while studying here at the station and doing research. We're going to wrap in succession. I'm just going to have them throw the last three slides up while we wrap up here because we're at the end of our time. There's first responders looking at stuff. The next slide is some of your cohorts with a light cart in the background. We have two of those light carts in Hawaii and the last one is a light cart by itself. It's really cool equipment like we talked offline. It's really reliable, really good, and really quiet. People are really impressed when they get chances to play with this stuff. Mike, I'd really like to thank you for being on the show today and spending some time with us and sharing. We've seen her Hawaii sharing your manateau with us. We'll definitely have you back on the show to talk a little bit more. Thanks for your time and thanks for being with us. I hope you have a great Christmas. Thank you, Stan. Appreciate it. Everyone else have a great holiday season. Enjoy your Christmas next week and take some time off and relax because that's what Stan's going to do. I might even crack a cold one and share with Michael. Until next Friday.