New Schedule Starts Sunday, Feb. 23, 2025
The following is a transcript of the above podcast:
Randol White:
The first hydrogen fuel cell electric busses to serve public transit customers along the peninsula are now in service, with many more on the way in the weeks, months and years to come.
The San Mateo County Transit District, or SamTrans, recently placed an order for 108 additional hydrogen busses, marking the largest order of its kind in North America to date.
The move toward hydrogen at Sam trans is symbolic of a major shift in the public transportation industry. But why hydrogen? What makes this such an attractive carbon free choice for transit? Where does hydrogen fuel even come from? And is it truly green?
I'm Randol White Public Information Officer at Sam trans Caltrain and the San Mateo County Transportation Authority. And joining me to help us answer some of the questions surrounding this shift toward hydrogen, are two experts on the topic.
David harbor is the director of maintenance at Sam trans and plays a major role in the adoption of the district's new hydrogen fleet. I work with David, so I'm going to take the liberty of calling him Dave today. Hey, thanks for making time to discuss this really significant milestone.
David Harbour:
Yeah, no problem, Randol
Randol White:
And Dr. Lewis Fulton is the Director of the Energy Futures Program at the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies. He also chairs the transportation working group of the California Hydrogen Hub known as ARCHES. Dr. Fulton, we really appreciate having you here to share your expertise regarding the future of hydrogen here in California.
Dr. Lewis Fulton:
Thank you, Randol, nice to be here. Yeah, I'm Lew and looking forward to the discussion.
Randol White:
All right, so let's start with, well, I really want to get down to the absolute basics. And I should mention in the industry, they're referred to as FCEBs, which is short for fuel cell, electric bus. But for our purposes today, I'll just call them hydrogen busses. But you might hear that FCEB initialism or hydrogen fuel cell, or just fuel cell, in the conversation, so I wanted you to know that ahead of time. Now, Dave on that topic, help us understand how a hydrogen bus works?
David Harbour:
Sure, sure. And thanks for clarifying the FCB because I will both throw that out there. It's just become part of my vocabulary. But the hydrogen busses, or the fcbs, basically take a gaseous form of hydrogen and what it uses as a fuel cell to turn that into electricity that charges batteries that run an electric motor. So it's really a hybrid of sorts.
Randol White:
And, is there a reason why SamTrans chose hydrogen over other zero emission technologies like battery electric I know there are battery electric busses in the fleet, but this was a big order.
David Harbour:
It was this order of 108 we do have 10 busses now. But the reason why we started out with our SamTrans started out with battery electric busses. A couple things that we learned is that operationally, hydrogen fuel cell busses, we expect them to go almost equivalent to the diesel mileage, or range, which is about 300 miles, where a battery electric bus is about 200 miles or so on a full state of charge. So that's one of the biggest reasons. As far as operationally, there definitely is a cost difference to specifically in infrastructure, bus costs are pretty close.
Randol White:
Like, per-bus cost.
David Harbour:
Yeah, per bus costs are pretty close, hydrogen being a little bit more expensive. There also is some concerns as far as the amount of electricity we would have needed to do the full transition with the hydrogen. It's, it kind of mimics what we have now with the diesel fueling station, it's a hydrogen fueling station. So to fill a bus full of gaseous hydrogen, it takes about 12 to 15 minutes versus on the BEBs, or the battery electric busses, charging at a zero state of charge for four hours or so.
Randol White:
The SamTrans service footprint is big, all the way into San Francisco down into Palo Alto, all of San Mateo County, which also has some significant hills to climb. All of that, I imagine, played a role.
David Harbour:
You know, it did. However, the propulsion system on the motors themselves that actually moved the bus are similar or shared between both the fcbs and the bebs or battery electric busses. It just becomes the capacity of batteries that you can actually have on a bus does not meet the range requirements that we need for a full day run. Whereas an FCEB or hydrogen bus, it will carry the amount of hydrogen that it will need to convert into electricity so that we can get the range just like a diesel bus.
Randol White:
Lew, let's turn to your area of expertise now to get a broader view of hydrogen as a public transit fuel. California has set ambitious climate goals, including achieving carbon neutrality in the next 20 years. Is hydrogen a reliable tool to reach those targets?
Dr. Lewis Fulton:
Yes, reliability of the vehicle is very important. Reliability of the fuel system is very important, as are the cost factors, I think are really important parts of those decisions. And I think Dave's way of describing it is going to be true for just about any transit agency or, let's say trucking fleet, the choice is really between technology. Battery electrics are very reliable, and they can tap into grid electricity pretty easily, but they take a long time to recharge, and they don't have the range that some operations are going to need. And so if you're looking at hydrogen, it's because, you know, you're hoping to get the same level of reliability and performance, but with the fast refueling and the longer range. And so that's really the trade off. Battery electric busses and trucks have been around a little bit longer, although we do have quite a number of fuel cell busses in operation in California since late 20-teens. I think AC Transit may have been the first agency to run fuel cells, but there have been really good experiences up and down the different groups that have been running these busses with reliability, and, you know, a certain amount of maintenance that may be beyond what you do with the diesel bus, but improving every year and on a trajectory to become quite a reliable technology.
Randol White:
Can we say at this point that hydrogen is a viable petroleum replacement, or is it just a tool, you know, one tool in the chest of clean energy strategies?
Dr. Lewis Fulton:
Well, I mean, it's certainly a viable replacement. There really are only two options if you want zero emissions, right? And these are the two: They're either electric or hydrogen. And incidentally, even with hydrogen, you can run hydrogen in an internal combustion engine. And there are, for example, some truck technologies, some companies that are putting that those they are not going to be zero emission for things like NOx (nitrogen oxide), but a fuel cell bus is zero emission for NOx, so California is prioritizing things that are truly zero emission, not just for greenhouse gasses, but also for pollutant emissions, and these are your two choices. So I think most transit agencies, and for that matter, most trucking fleets are probably going to be interested in a mix of electric and hydrogen. They have their advantages and disadvantages. It may be that, let's say, for some applications, the battery electrics are always going to be cheaper to to own and operate. But again, they don't have quite the level of, you know, service that you can get out of a fuel cell. So I'd say it's a tool in out of the two tools, but likely to play a pretty important role for many, many agencies.
Randol White:
Dave, back to you now, transitioning to a fleet of well over 100 hydrogen busses in the next couple of years, that's a big task. Walk us through briefly, if you could, the infrastructure SamTrans has to develop to support this shift.
David Harbour:
It is a big change, huge change. And really, there's not a lot of data out there. And Dr Fulton mentioned about AC Transit, you know, they were one of the pioneers of the FCEBs. So very, very small sample, and there's been several different generations since then, just the fuel cell itself. So we're really pioneering all this. So we're really kind of creating the data for others to learn. We do there. We are pretty tight knit in the transit community, throughout the state, throughout the country, though, on committees and so on so forth that we do meet regularly. But for us here at SamTrans, you know, safety is paramount, and this is just part of workforce development, is that we've gone through and to make sure we're in alignment with the National Fire Protection Agency, so working with our safety department and for those external sources where we can get that training, also, we hired an external source to do skills gap analysis. We're going through the final review on that just to see how to best transition our diesel mechanics, which, have, you know, many, many years of experience over to the ZEV fleets. Another thing too, is that we have to look at our stores, inventory and parts and how we need to transition that over, and then our workflow processes, which goes into back to the workforce development and the safety and PPE.
Randol White:
Yeah, Lew, Dave brought up the safety aspect. Studies do show that hydrogen is generally considered to be a safer fuel than diesel or gasoline when handled responsibly. Can you help us explain why that is?
Dr. Lewis Fulton:
Well, it's less exposed to combustion situations, and we just have to realize that gasoline and diesel are not the safest fuels. I mean, I think that's kind of the information gap here. There are many 1000s of car fires every year related to those fuels or truck fires, and there have been very few incidents of mishaps with the hydrogen vehicles that are out there. We've got somewhere around 15,000 light duty hydrogen fuel cell vehicles running on the streets of California, and there have been very few issues with that. The stations, we have around 50 stations, very successful in terms of any way of measuring safety. The station reliability is another question, and that's been improving. But safety, it has not been an issue, really. And then, of course, it's partly because the safety standards are so tight and are being followed very rigorously.
Randol White:
And the gas is really light and disperses quickly, right? So it's hard for it to be concentrated enough to cause a problem?
Dr. Lewis Fulton:
Right. If there are leaks, the hydrogen goes straight up, and there can be but it's not, right, it's not a major explosion risk under most leakage circumstances. That's right.
Randol White:
So one common question Lou that people have is about the environmental footprint of hydrogen production. Not all hydrogen is created the same way, correct.
Dr. Lewis Fulton:
That's right. And I kind of misspoke a minute ago, because hydrogen is not automatically a zero greenhouse gas fuel. If you run hydrogen in a fuel cell, bus or truck or car, it is going to be zero pollutant emissions. The only thing coming out of the tail pipe is water. However, in the production of hydrogen, you might produce greenhouse gasses. And you will produce greenhouse gasses if you derive the hydrogen from natural gas, and that is where a lot of the hydrogen comes from. These days, you can also have biomass to hydrogen and get your methane that way, and that could be near zero emission, near zero greenhouse gas. The state has a goal of having zero greenhouse gas hydrogen, and in that arches hub that is just really kicking off now the only hydrogen that will be part of that hub, in terms of the funded projects, will be electrolytic hydrogen. So you use electricity with electrolysis to produce the hydrogen, and that, as long as the electricity is clean, that is a zero carbon, zero greenhouse gas pathway. So that is what the state is prioritizing.
Randol White:
Dave, where is SamTrans in the process of sourcing its hydrogen?
David Harbour:
Right now we're currently under contract that came with our — we call it our temporary fueling facility — it's more like a mobile fueling facility. We estimate it has a capacity to fill 30 busses per day, or FCEBs a day. But the the hydrogen that we purchased right now was under that contract by the vendor. My understanding is that — back to what Dr Fulton was saying — there's different ways of refining it, and right now, because of the the hub being developed, they may source it at different sources. And it may some sources might be more greener than than the rest, but but also to to factor in is that transportation will factor into the overall greenness, or green rating, of the hydrogen so
Randol White:
Meaning getting it to us, right?
David Harbour:
Right, if it's actually green where it's produced, but it's transported with a diesel truck that factors into, quote, unquote, the greenness of it. So that's another thing too. The vendor that we're purchasing them from are looking into hydrogen trucks to transport. And I think that that industry is developing that's just kind of what they're waiting for, is that opportunity for those trucks to be bedded and purchased.
Randol White:
We're somewhat in an infancy stage right now, so all of those parts have to be developed and and on that topic, other transit districts will be looking to SamTrans in the coming years as the agency makes this hydrogen shift, where have you turned to for examples to help guide the process AC Transit.
David Harbour:
AC Transit is one, Orange County Transit Authority is another. We also have a on board CTE, where we've onboarded CTE as a consultant. So a Champaign Urbana is another agency. They've put me in contact with my peer there, Champaign Urbana in Illinois. There's also, I believe, Humboldt. So Humboldt has come down. Santa Cruz is, they have a hydrogen order. So the chief operating officer will keep in touch with me quite a bit and ask me questions as needed, but it's really about sharing information. And again, the networking environment was already established well before this transition, so it's really, really a huge advantage to have that established. We've just known each other for years and years and years. So it's really easy to pick up the phone and it costs nothing to say, hey, what's happening over there? How are you doing this? Or, you know, even when you're developing some type of scope of workers spec, the lessons learned now are just priceless.
Randol White:
Yeah, that's great. Dr. Fulton, what's your outlook for hydrogens role in public transit over the next decade?
Dr. Lewis Fulton:
I would say that at this point, California is the leader on this although you mentioned Champaign Urbana, that's near Chicago. You know, there are other transit agencies, I think in Portland, Seattle, they're looking at these things. But the arches hub is targeting 1000 fuel cell busses in California by about 2030, so clearly SamTrans will be an important part of that as well a number of other transit agencies. And I don't know what the exact number of orders exists right now, but we're getting into the hundreds, and I think we have a good chance to see 1000 busses running by 2030 that's a large number of busses. We're going to learn a lot. We're going to hopefully bring down the costs dramatically through scale and learning, and then that creates the opportunity for many more transit agencies around the country to play in that space, you know, a more affordable space with with a good track record, and I think that's kind of the way we look at it.
Randol White:
Well, then finally, Dave, these busses in the SamTrans fleet, the hydrogen ones, they're clearly marked, so when someone boards one, they they'll be able to know they're getting on a new hydrogen bus?
David Harbour:
They will. They do look much like a battery electric, one of our New Flyer battery electric busses. These are New Flyer hydrogen busses. We put this this graphic on the back is some bubbles, and there's some bubbles up on the upper cap, but it does say hydrogen on the upper cap. So the overall, it has the same trans design, but overlaid on that you'll be able to tell that it is a hydrogen bus. It'll ride and kind of sound — well, or won't sound — like a battery electric bus is very, very quiet, but yeah, keep an eye out for the graphics on there and hydrogen.
Randol White:
All right, Dave Harbour, director of maintenance at Sam trans, looking forward to following along as the District grows its fleet of hydrogen busses. Thanks again for your time today.
David Harbour:
Thank you.
Randol White:
And Dr. Lew Fulton, Director of the Energy Futures Program at the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies, thank you as well for making time to discuss this really significant shift toward hydrogen as a green fuel source for public transit.
Dr. Lewis Fulton:
My pleasure. Thank you
Randol White:
Again. I'm Randol White. Find more information at Sam trans.com/blog, and thanks for listening.