#LTCtalks 2024 Dialogue 3: Fueling the Future: Advancing Hydrogen Technology & Infrastructure in IE
good afternoon everybody it is almost afternoon I am Kimberly Collins I am the director of the Leonard Transportation Center it's great to see you all here we're trying something new going out and doing destination dialogues we've always just had them lately at Omnitrans but now we're thinking of going out on the road and showing folks looks a lot of the different transportation realities that exist within the Inland Empire give people a give of how transportation is developing and moving forward within our communities so I think we have a really great program today we're going to have a welcoming remarks and then we will have our speakers and a tour and we're going to look at the hydrogen facilities and I believe we're going to ride a hydrogen bus so first I’d like to welcome josh welcome everyone my name is Joshua Landis I’m the planning manager at Foothill transit this is our Pomona operating facility we have two facilities our other facilities in the cities in Arcadia Urbandale it's actually split right down the middle Doran unfortunately couldn't be here today so we have a saying that blessed are the flexible so I’m filling in I’ve actually been part of the advisory council since some of the earlier dialogue series in 2018 so happy to welcome everybody to our Pomona facility all of our facilities are contracted out so the ones here is with Keolis our partner today at the Pomona facility and then Arcadia is operated by a company called Transdev so everyone here has a welcome gift it's one of our double deck buses it was actually the 1st all electric double deck bus in North America we have two of those are operated out of the Arcadia facility and they operate on our silver streak line which goes from Montclair to Downtown LA and then hopefully you can stick around after the presentations for the tour we do have our hydrogen fuel cell buses that we'll take a tour on and we have 33 of those right now and we are in the process of ordering more as well as more double deck buses so looking to expand our fleet and so that's so welcome to Pomona and now I’d like to welcome up a great supporter of the dialogues and really been a partner also a mentor HNTB and we have a new face from HNTB today Basem Muallem please hi good afternoon my name is Basem Muallem so I am currently with HNTB and before I go into HNTB and what we do at HNTB so I worked for this lady right here when I was with ailPros working on the Redlands passenger rail I worked for Parsons I worked for WSP currently I’m with HNTB so when I was asked you are you familiar with the Leonard Transportation Center and so what you mean am I familiar I was on the board for a few years so one of the things that you do as a director of CalTrans I was the director of CalTrans I ended up my career as a director of CalTrans is to be able to network with the community transportation is very critical and that's where I saw a lot of value with the Leonard Transportation Center the looking at the congestion on the i-15 University Ave Cal State San Bernardino but then looking at the big picture how can we assist you guys getting grants what is it that we can do to assist the center I think it's a great center I’ve been there are numerous numerous times and so I’m very very excited to be here a little bit about HNTB we are a big big firm so this is my fourth start now as far as in consulting have been concerning for almost 10 years they do a bit of everything so they're really really known you know they do planning airports rail construction management project management all the biggest projects in the east and here bridges we're very well known for that so I’m very excited to be here and I look forward to completely partnering with you on this great thank you so much first I’d like to also thank as we've noted HNTB is a great sponsor partner and mentor really so they do more than just sponsor our program but they really provide a lot of input and assistance which is greatly appreciated I’d also like to note our other platinum sponsors the Ontario International Airport down the street and the San Bernardino International Airport who have been great supporters of this program our gold sponsors our Omnitrans SoCalGas the US National Science Foundation and Woodruff and Smart our silver sponsors our EXP Foothill Transit Global Leadership Alliance LANE Metrolink SCAG the Southern California Association of Governments Syrusa Engineering and Theodora Oringher law firm so it's great to have all of these again supporters and we appreciate all of them for their for their belief and their and their work with us ok from here I’d like to start off we these are dialogues so our expectation is that people will engage you don't want to have just a bunch of talking heads out there and experts but we want individuals to really be part of the conversation so just to get us thinking and starting us off we have a poll that you can go on if you're online you can click in and if you're here in the room and so they're questions they're not scientific they're just to get folks to start thinking about the issues and one of the issues is the hydrogen distribution infrastructure it's fully developed pretty sure yes no unsure I know what I would answer and we'll see what folks are out there all right there we go 100% no I knew that I was I was worried and I thought we'd like get some unsures but yeah the hydrogen distribution infrastructure is just beginning to get developed and there's a number of projects out there and we'll see how our region and the Southern California area works with that oh we have a yes ok so from there I’d like to welcome our first speaker she is online she'll be up on our screen and that's Edith Moreno from SoCalGas and if we could bring her up she's going to speak about advancing California ’s clean energy transportation I am really sorry I’m not was not able to join you all this morning there was a little bit of a scheduling conflict but I’m really bummed to be missing out the tour of the hydrogen buses and so I you know I’m a huge believer of just kind of the hydrogen fuel cell technology and its applications in the heavy duty sector and I actually drive a Nexo myself which is one of the first like h2 fuel cell SUV but again I’m Edith Moreno I’m happy to be here with you all and I support kind of on a high level strategic stakeholder engagement for the gas company and specifically my efforts have been focused on the clean field space and more so and Angeles Link so I’m here to talk to you all a little bit about what SoCalGas is doing in this space I know I only have a quick 15 minutes but we can wait for the Q&A I'll just do a quick overview on just SoCalGas if folks are not a customer of ours but you know we've been in the game of delivering energy to you know millions of Southern Californians for over 150 years we are actually the largest natural gas distribution utility in the country right we cover about 24,000 square miles of terrain so it's almost half of California you'll see that kind of little thumbnail icon here but again I'm just kind of happy to be here today to just kind of describe, you know SoCalGas's role in the in the clean energy transition so next slide please I won't go into the nitty gritty of each of these bills but I all I will say is, you know, we live in a state that has very aggressive climate goals and very aggressive clean energy targets and it's really great that we live in a state that takes climate change seriously and that we are a leader in you know setting very ambitious goals that will not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions but would also reduce criteria air pollutants right but if we can just go on to the next slide I’ll just go ahead and jump in here but you know I think what's happening now is right we've adopted all of these very great aggressive clean energy targets there's you know a huge push for decarbonizing our economy but how we're going to get there or how we're going to decarbonize our economy will require essentially a strategy where we have a broad portfolio of energy sources including clean fuels I think the reality is that you know battery electric technology is really great and it works for end use applications where it works and where it's it kind of makes sense from a cost effective standpoint but the reality is that not everything will be able to be fully electrified and we will still need a clean fuel specifically to power our economy whether that's aviation right for complexes the heavy duty sector the mobility sector heavy industry and even power generation right you know today you know we have abundant renewable resources but at night what is powering and our economy and keeping the lights on is natural gas and hopefully in the future sure you know we'll be able to have clean fuels like hydrogen that have scaled up and readily deployed to support all of these sectors and I think you know I’ve been working in the hydrogen space for about several years now probably 5 years or so and it was really great to see that the department of energy right at the federal level is really taking a look at paying attention to the role that clean fuels and specifically hydrogen would play in facilitating the development of not only decarbonizing California but decarbonizing the country and so if folks are not aware of this you know the federal government is investing about $7 billion in developing hydrogen hubs and then also there was some money that was set aside as well for carbon management solutions so think of carbon capture or direct air capture techno allergies and California actually was one of those hubs so we are slated to receive about $1.2 billion in federal funding to facilitate the development of hydrogen hubs in California which I think just speaks volume to the amount of policy support there is rate and the amount of momentum and I’m really hoping that we can continue to ride you know this wave of you know the support that we have for advancing the clean fuels technology ok so what is SoCalGas role in developing this I know some people you know earlier I’m glad that we had that poll you know that asked the audience whether we think that our hydrogen distribution network is fully developed and unfortunately it's not and I think that's one of the biggest reasons why hydrogen today is super expensive largely because it gets trucked to those filling stations it gets produced and then gets trucked but you know the most cost effective way to transport hydrogen is via a dedicated hydrogen pipeline and so that is what SoCalGas is actively investing and studying today and so we have a proposal to build what would be hopefully the largest cleanable hydrogen pipeline system that would deliver reliable hydrogen to you know the LA Basin to power right the ports to support the heavy duty transportation sector and it could also and with you know providing that fuel to power these sectors of the economy we could hopefully see a significant improvement in air quality and reduce our GHG emissions from the hard to electrify sectors in the LA region so where SoCalGas is with this project as we're about a year and a half in to what we are calling phase 1 so it's about 16 feasibility studies that SoCalGas has executed ranging from number of things in you know where is it that where is that hydrogen would be produced who would be the off takers what's the cost effectiveness of hydrogen right does it make sense to build out a dedicated hydrogen delivery infrastructure system or is it more cost effective to potentially pursue other technologies like maybe full electrification and so I mentioned we're about a year and a half and into the process since the commission authorized SoCalGas to proceed with this work so we're expecting to complete this first phase of Angela’s link and all of these feasibility studies will be available to the public by the end of the year so it's a really exciting time for the gas company and it's really great that you know we have received authorization from the commission to proceed with this work which again just speaks volumes to just the support that we have in California to figure out what whether we'll be able to make the facilitation of the development of a hydrogen economy in California work so next slide so I talked about you know I guess I started with the future with Angeles Link but I wanted to highlight quickly what SoCalGas is actively doing today in terms of a tangible project with hydrogen so we have built what we're calling the hydrogen innovation experience at our energy resource center in Downey if folks have not had the opportunity to visit our hydrogen home and our hydrogen micro grid please feel free to reach out to me and we can facilitate a tour of our hydrogen home but essentially what it is it's a showcase of how both the gas as in hydrogen and the electric and the renewables just kind of all come together to work and power essentially it's a small scale microgrid demonstration project that we have connected to so we have solar panels on site that power the electrolyzer that electrolyzer produces hydrogen on site it is stored the hydrogen is used to power the fuel cell it's also used to blend so we take a certain I think anywhere actually it's 20% blend of hydrogen that is blended into the natural gas distribution system that is connected to the home and that powers the powers essentially all of the natural gas appliances with no modifications today and so again it's just off the shelf technology and it's really great to see that you know we're able to demonstrate this to the to the public right because I think there's a lot of certainty with just hydrogen you know what is it but I think a lot of folks don't realize is that you know hydrogen is widely used today there's about 1600 miles of dedicated hydrogen pipeline right I think today it's largely used in petrochemical applications and even some steel and other heavy duty industrial applications like the production of ammonia yeah but I think having folks visit the hydrogen innovation experience just really helps folks understand what even an electrolyzer is and you'll see it all come together to power this home and we have a really great setup inside the home that is very interactive and very educational so this so I know I just mentioned the home and that's very much just a test demonstration kind of pilot that we've set up but right now we're in the process of hopefully bringing this hydrogen blending project into the real world environment and so at the direction of the commission we were required to join our other utilities including pacific gas and electric San Diego gas and electric and southwest gas to propose demonstration pilot projects to collect the real world data that we need to blend you know to develop a hydrogen blending injection standard I think a lot of research today shows that you know it's we're pretty safe to blend hydrogen at low levels but as a prudent operator of the gas system right we want to make sure that we collect actual data and so what we proposed with the commission are two projects one with the city of orange cove which is kind of located in the northernmost part of our service territory and so we have an isolated system there that we've identified and then we also have a project at UC Irvine that will be serve their recreation center and UC Irvine is actually a really great leader in the hydrogen space and so we're excited to partner with them and collect additional data and work with alongside them to hopefully to you know get the data that we need to eventually inform the development of an injection stand so again this is just an application that we submitted to the commission just earlier this year we're hopefully expecting to have approval from the commission by early next year and hopefully we can hit the ground running on these projects and do live demonstrations to eventually inform the development of an injection standard and last thing I want to note is right why we need an injection standard today is right we want to be able you know we want to be able to have a place where we can put the hydrogen that is being produced in our state like again it's currently only trucked in California to the hydrogen end users specifically the hydrogen fueling stations and as over time right we'll be able to build out hydrogen dedicated hydrogen infrastructure but in the meantime right hopefully we'll be able to inject the hydrogen that is produced into the system the existing system today so we have a place you know to put it in and continue to support that scale up of hydrogen like I mentioned we've been in the energy delivery space for over 150 years and you know SoCalGas does have a really great workforce to leverage right our bread and butter is pipelines today and so the only difference of what would change and how we operate is instead of delivering natural gas today hopefully we'll be delivering hydrogen to our customers in in the future so that's it ok thank you Edith that was great we can take some questions if you have anybody has any questions right now for Edith we have one question from the audience very interesting project in your overview of the project component is separating the hydrogen and the gas there during the reverse as blending I’m just curious what that component is for so was the question is blending the project injecting the hutch into the pipeline that's a blend and then downstream eventually pulling the hydrogen from the from the natural gas was that the question yes so in your overview zero is one component that you are doing the separation of the blended gas back to the hydrogen gas I’m just kind of curious what that component is for and why you have that part oh yeah I’m sorry if I might have misspoke of her it wasn't clear but right now there's no proposal as part of our hydrogen blending projects we are not planning to separate the hydrogen I think what I was trying to say is you know blending is a way to not only lower the kind of carbon footprint of the fuel that so how gas delivers today but it's also a place where hydrogen producers can put the hydrogen and while we work on dedicated hydrogen infrastructure I know there are some end users who might look at hydrogen separation technologies right if they only want pure hydrogen that is if they are not near the infrastructure or not near a production area but I just want to clarify and again I apologize if I misspoke but we're not proposing hydrogen separation as part of that pilot project so then I think the question would be if it's in residential are natural gas or appliances going to be able to run with the hydrogen mix yes so yes and so right now it's shown so we actually have been testing at our own laboratories in it's called an engineering analysis center or engineering center and that's in Pico and so we've been able to demonstrate there that our appliances work up to with 30% blend but the one that we have in Downey is operating at 20% so the tankless water heater that if we installed on in the home is what you would get at home depot or any other hardware store where you where you would buy your appliance and so that's working with no modification same thing with the stove on site same thing with the I think we have an outdoor fireplace and an outdoor gas BBQ as well so no modifications to the equipment would be required with up to 20% blend all right that's great then we're going to get on to our next poll question so we can bring up our next speaker our next question hydrogen is as safe as any other transportation fuel energy source yes no unsure this is a question of you need people ask how safe is hydrogen and hopefully everyone has the vision that it's going to be driving down the road and your car is going to blow up that's what we know that's not true and our next speaker has the expertise to tell us all about that ok all right few unsure but most people think it's just as safe as everyone else which is good with that I’d like to bring up our next speaker who's actually in the room thank you so much I’m really happy to be here today so yeah my name is Alejandra Hormaza and I am working as an assistant professor at Cal Poly Pomona so I’d like to start off by talking about hydrogen leakage my past work and my future work and to address the poll question earlier because I feel like I get that question a lot is hydrogen actually safe and I understand like the uncertainty that some people might have because it's unfamiliar and it has sort of there's been myths about it that have been proliferated throughout society but I like to remind people that we are constantly surrounded by fuel infrastructure that we cannot see it's usually in our homes we also use devices like our phones that have explosive parts and we don't really think of them as being dangerous the advantage about like there was the incident with Samsung in like 2016 and like you couldn't even take it to the airport and the other concern or the other advantage about hydrogen too is that because it's so much lighter than air if there is a leak it's going to disperse much more quickly than like a liquid fuel at the gas station where it can pool and because it pools that poses a high risk of combustion so I would my opinion is that hydrogen can be safe with the right measures ok so but a big concern is leaks right because hydrogen it's very small and so there are concerns about it leaking from our natural gas system so this was the bulk of my masters work in like 2017 and we really wanted to understand how existing natural gas infrastructure would perform when full of hydrogen so what are some of the potential blends right so as you can see here we have all of this infrastructure we were really focusing on after the meter infrastructure so low pressure what you might find in a residential setting or a business with gas powered appliances with a lot of joints and fittings and so in the literature and NREL the gas technology institute everyone agrees that hydrogen has these properties that suggest it should leak much faster but this is based upon the assumption that we're looking at flows through typical channels right if we have just a very large pipe here if we're flowing hydrogen should flow much faster than methane because it's so much more like it has qualities that make it much more mobile and if we look at these different flow regimes and different ways of modeling different types of flows it should leak anywhere from like 1.3 to three times faster but until we actually test this we don't really know if this is true because what I often tell students in that class especially in I think in any kind of setting a lot of the way we use physics and science to understand the world it's just the model of real systems so we have to make really significant simplifications to be able to come up with reasonable analysis and sometimes the assumptions that we make they don't apply which means our models are invalid and so we wanted to understand this experimentally to really see if this is true this was over at UC Irvine so we separated a section of the natural gas system as you can see here highlighted in yellow with various different properties this had been used previously for combustion types of experiments where they in fact we're looking at natural gas hydrogen blends and so the literature does suggests that up to about 20 I’ve seen like 10% to 20% you can use existing natural gas appliances with hydrogen mixtures so also note here that natural gas combustion sensors at this time did not detect any amount of gaseous fuel leakage ok so these were the results so you can see along the y axis it's the pressure and then along the x axis it's the time and we tested natural gas we tested a blend of 10% hydrogen 90% natural gas by volume and then only hydrogen and you can see that well first of all our system was leaking right because if our system wasn't leaking the natural gas system the natural gas pressure should have been the same over the course of the week so one this is indicative ok the system is leaking we don't detect it the old factory sense like we don't smell the sulfur in the gas but also our systems aren't detecting this so this slide ok likely in the discrepancy between the methane budget between what's it like in the atmosphere versus how much we measure there there's probably a lot of these small leaks that are happening and methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas so that's kind of a bad sign and then second they even both the full hydrogen bond and the 10% hydrogen they show the same initial and final obviously the same initial but the same final pressure the rate of leakage is the same for the three blends and we tested this over and over with various different types of equipment because this didn't line up with what was in the literature and then when we looked more closely at where the leaks were happening we realized that they were happening at the joints right so at the elbows at the T connection that there were any caps or any kinds of like valves it was happening in those areas so then we actually spoke with some people from SoCalGas that were running experiments on 5% hydrogen blends and they also found very similar behavior where the 5% blend was showing the same rate of leakage as just the pure natural gas blend which I think I need to update some of these labels yeah so we went back into the literature and we found that there was a same online paper by these I think they're related these two brothers Swain and Swain that was published in 1992 so a long long time ago and they used fittings that were given to them by a gas company because those fittings were faulty and so they were just kind of like donated to do some of these assessments on how different blends of hydrogen methane and propane would leak and their findings surprisingly suggested very similar findings to our own so this is one leak a second leak 3 and then four so you can see that methane hydrogen and propane they all show the same behavior if you look at the pressure versus the flow rate so for the same pressure the flow rate is the same but classical thermodynamics not the classical fluid mechanics suggests that should not be the case we should see something more like this where there's a deviation and they attribute this to entrance effects so they say it's happening because the flow is not fully developed and therefore the assumptions break down and so we wanted to test this ourselves to see if actually lowering that entrance length would impact to the floor rate but if anything we found that it actually makes it worse if we make the length of the tube very very small the difference in leakage is significant and even greater than what these models would suggest so it was definitely not these entrance affects yeah so we went back to look at ok what is actually happening we know that the leaks are happening in these areas where the joints are so what about these joints and these faulty fittings makes it so that we can't approximate the flow as though it's a perfect channel and we started to realize ok classical fluid mechanics assumes that the flow is steady that it would fall under these flow regimes that are pretty ideal like laminar flow that we can ignore density fluctuations that we can ignore any changes in viscosity and also we can ignore the behavior of the molecules at the wall boundary well when you look at this more closely if you think about a leak a leak is happening at the boundary of the wall it's not like the molecules there's some kind of interaction between the free molecules that are flowing and the edges of that pipe right so that's an assumption that becomes quite significant and if one of the key assumptions too in these macroscopic big flows is that you ignore that the flow is made-up of actual small particles but really when a leak happens it's not that your entire gas leaks all at once right you have like tiny molecules that find their way and they separate from the bulk gas and enter that wall that little crack in the wall right so suddenly the molecular nature becomes very important yeah so we were able to taking those ideas especially about the importance of the molecular nature and this deviation from these perfect conditions at equilibrium we were able to replicate these findings or these results so you can see pressure versus flow rate for natural gas and hydrogen using a capillary tube the capillary tube is actually something that's typically used in gas chromatography to measure concentrations of various different types of gases but the reason for why it was a successful replication is because it closely resembles the tortuously path that occurs in a leak with significant wall interactions between the molecules escaping and flowing through that crack so the leaks that suggests that the leaks can't be represented as a smooth channel where we have flow through a pipe rather we have to account for the deviation from equilibrium and the significant interactions with the wall boundaries and so we proposed the two step mechanism so the first step is that you have molecules really moving around right like the air in this room it's just kind of moving and bouncing everywhere so first of all these molecules have to enter the leak crack and so that's step one and so it might be hydrogen is like still more mobile right so it could be hydrogen is entering and leaving but it's entering and and leaving at a much faster rate but the net effect is still going to be the same ok and then once the molecules enter then they enter the very torturous path right and these connections they mated connections they're not perfect right sometimes there's edges like roughness in the edges which is what causes this thing to happen in the 1st place and there isn't always perfect alignment so you have a path that has a lot of changes in the diameter and that means that you have differences in density that suddenly become important and also differences you suddenly the molecular interactions with the wall boundaries become very significant and that instead of the particle like the that for this step 2 it's that the pressure is what's driving the leak rate and so that is why this is our hypothesis for why methane and hydrogen leak at the same rate under these kinds of conditions and so these were some of the conclusions so that hydrogen and methane may leak at the same rate from low pressure natural gas infrastructure hydrogen doesn't preferentially leak so it's not that the hydrogen if we have a blend the hydrogen will not if we have a blend that's mixed the hydrogen won't leak faster than the methane typical leaks cannot be modeled in macroscopic continuous flows we propose a 2 step mechanism and then finally odorants and natural gas they're not sufficient to detect small leaks and not that these leaks I think really pose a danger to us in terms of like a potential ignition but more that there's a lot of like gas that we might just be leaking without even noticing and not really accounting for and so there's a paper that I published on this at Cal Poly Pomona I’m planning to continue with this work by assessing the leakage rate of various different types of materials right because we only looked at low pressure infrastructure but there's the distribution and also the transmission system and there's plastic pipes that are used mainly for hydrogen more work on examining the fundamentals like mechanisms of leakage as well as looking at because there's this idea that we can use underground storage for storing hydrogen but how can we better understand that and what could be the potential leakage that could happen and the other reason for why this is really important is because there's a lot of concern on hydrogen can be kind of a controversial fuel right now and in the atmospheric science community there's a big concern about the short term climate impacts of hydrogen but because we don't have quantitative evidence that actually understand how much hydrogen could potentially leak from the system these models are only as accurate as the assumptions that they are based on and without having assumptions that are based on actual science it really makes these models I don't think as strong as they could be right so I think there's really an opportunity to reconcile some of these tensions around hydrogen and I think also we can leverage these findings to address some of the mixed exceptions surrounding hydrogen that exists today and with that I’m happy to take any questions thank you yeah that's just in case people have questions yeah thanks you know just curious when you say there is this leakage so is it just when you go through a different topography different alignment going straight versus then you have a bend in the areas like with that leakage is that consistent with just the hydrogen about the blended and how about the methane if you put that methane for example and you have a change like an angle 50% leak or it just only happens mostly when you put in so far from what we've seen only when you put hydrogen or even blended so yeah they're all three gases they're all leaking from the same fittings all of them so they all show that they're leaking the same there's no difference in their behavior between the hydrogen the blend and the natural gas so they are leaking at the same rate yes at the same rate from the same places yes are you saying that you're going to be doing some additional studies on different materials for either treatment or transmitted hydrogen are you familiar with any new materials right now that are maybe stronger than what they use right now for the for example the class 8 trucks they have this you know really huge and heavy containers so that they can maintain the pressure necessary to yes economically be able to transfer and utilize the hydrogen cells yeah that's a good question so I’m not familiar with storage materials right because in a truck that's more storage I’m more familiar with materials used in pipes and I know that for hydrogen typically plastic pipes are what are preferred in industry yeah transmission yes can we just see by looking at vibration in the pipe and found that leakage no but that's a great test to look that's a great idea so the question was there a leakage between when you're filling the dispenser yeah I don't know the mechanism so I can't answer that frequently do you have a question so ok my question is so how much can the program reduce the effectiveness of the buses that we're going to be looking at like what kind of strategies can we or is it already implemented in the bus that we're going to look at or established because I can reduce like how much how effective it is so the hydrogen is just like any other fuel source it goes into and so it's probably similar you know they have they have a special nozzle right so that we can look at it so that you don't have the release but you there's release when you go to the gas station right there's releases from the nozzle so you know you'd have to see what the what the nozzle what the protections are within the nozzle and then it goes generally into a fuel cell right so it's powered differently the questions is your question about like the problem of leakage and how this could impact the deployment of hydrogen is that ok yeah so yeah so that's a really good question right from an economic ok so hydrogen today is really really expensive and the Biden Harris administration they've set this hydrogen earth shot the last time they had an earth shot was to get to the moon in like I forget exactly the numbers for the moon but for hydrogen it's to bring it down to $1 per kilogram in like 1 decade and I’m forgetting what the third one is 111 I’m blanking but so today hydrogen is significantly more expensive than methane and then any fossil fuels and part of that is because the equipment that we have to make hydrogen renewably which are called electrolyzers and they just split water into hydrogen oxygen that is still it's at a high technology readiness level but it's not it's just expensive today and it's barely entering the market there is funding going into this through in the inflation reduction act to bring it down but so to answer your question from an economic perspective leaking hydrogen is not very good for these developers especially today where hydrogen is so expensive right and in the future it still won't be I think even like 10% might be quite significant right because every time that there's hydrogen being leaked it's money being wasted because it costs money to make that hydrogen right so like from my financial standpoint it's not very good and then also from an efficiency standpoint because if you're using the fuel in your car obviously if you're leaking some of it you're going to get less range the question is yeah if there's a cost to the blend or if it's the same price coming across to the t consumer because the hydrogen is hydrogen is more expensive than the natural gas so what is the is the cost changing yes that's a really good question so what we have in Downey is just a SoCalGas facility right so right now there's no cost to anyone aside from just SoCalGas of operating that and the what if we ultimately get approved for the pilot project and if ultimately we develop a hydrogen blending injection standard that the state needs to adopt the pricing we'd still have to determine that because it's going to be very much dependent on how much hydrogen production we have online and how many customers are going to be receiving the blend if that makes sense I’m sorry I can't give you any specifics but today right we're just pulling natural gas from SoCal gases system we're producing that hydrogen on site and so the costs there are essentially what the water cost that we get from the city of Downey right and then just kind of SoCal gases operation and maintenance cost for that setup but ultimately in a future where hopefully we'll be delivering hydrogen blended fuels to our customers there's still a lot of uncertainty on what that rate impact would be but that that's a really good question it'll be still several years out until right we get information from the pilot program we then go back to the state of California or the public utilities commission specifically with our proposal of a statewide hydrogen blending injection standard and then in that process which I would say my just best estimate is maybe in five years or so and that in that time frame we would be going through the tariff changes and the rate changes associated with the hydrogen blend into the system I hope that answers the question yeah and I guess what is the price differential right now between hydrogen and natural gas oh my gosh it is $36 a kilogram today at the pump and then the natural gases is 36 yeah so 36 of hydrogen a kilogram and I have not checked our rates but we bill by the term and I’d have to get back to you so Tod Warden says it is about $2 depends on the yard riverside cities about 25 most natural gas stations are about $2 a gallon oh you're talking about natural gas fueling stations not what goes with the customers yeah so it's 36 and then the CNG stations it depends SoCalGas owns and operates so natural gas or CNG fueling stations and that's a lot but it depends on where you are all right so right over at $36 versus like $2 correct ok great so we'll talk about that we're going to close out this portion of the dialogue thanks so much to both of our speakers I’d like to just give another round of applause and now for those of us who are on site we're going to go get on the hydrogen bus and we're going to go around the yard a bit and see the facilities here to understand Foothill Transit is one of the few there's the Downey of course but that's LA County and this is almost San Bernardino county but it's foothill transits one of the few the few hydrogen facilities within our region so it's going to be a good chance to see it and there's some clean transportation pioneers of clean transportation Doran Barnes unfortunately who was not able to be here has really been at the forefront of transportation we have a survey for you if you can online answer the survey yeah this is our first kind of going out and taking the dialogues on the road so we'd like to get feedback from you about that as we move forward and thank you all for those of you online for coming and for those of you who are here go outside and do our tour thank you so much enjoy the tour everyone thank you thank you
2024-07-18 22:13
