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Honda bailed on the Clarity — its only hydrogen-powered car in the U.S. — but the automaker hasn’t quit on fuel cells.
That’s the message Honda sent with a peculiar announcement today: It’s putting some old Clarity fuel cells back to work, combining them into a backup power system for its data center just south of Los Angeles.
This is just a “proof of concept,” Honda told TechCrunch, but it aims to commercialize the tech and sees potential applications beyond helping data centers keep the lights on.
The used fuel cell systems in Honda’s backup-power demonstration once powered leased Clarities (via an electrochemical reaction that combines hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity). Honda retired these used fuel cells for transport, but they apparently still work well enough to drive its server farm in case of a power failure. Previously, Honda relied on diesel for backup power at the facility. (Honda said it uses this particular data center to “securely maintain and access its proprietary data,” because “automotive design is data intensive.”)
It’s nice to hear that Honda found a use for its old fuel cells, but crucially, this demonstration isn’t as environmentally friendly as it could be. The company told TechCrunch that it isn’t exclusively using green hydrogen in the pilot, which means at least some of it was generated via fossil fuels.
This is the trouble with using hydrogen to generate electricity: Fuel cells do so while spitting out only water and heat as exhaust, but they’re still indirectly pollutive if that hydrogen comes from dirty sources (as most hydrogen fuel does). Correcting this demands a whole lot more green hydrogen production, on top of whatever infrastructure is needed to deliver the hydrogen. This is why some automakers don’t believe in the future of hydrogen-powered cars; they argue it’s simply too much work to go that route.
But! Honda still believes in hydrogen-powered cars. In fact, this demonstration is also kind of an ad for Honda’s next-generation fuel cells, which the company developed with General Motors.
As Honda tells it, the next-gen fuel cell systems will power its upcoming hydrogen-powered vehicle, which is “based on the Honda CR-V” and is due in 2024.
Honda also plans to use these new fuel cell systems for backup power as it scales the tech. That means this effort won’t be as circular, if at all, when it’s commercialized. Yet, on the upside, Honda said it intends to exclusively use green hydrogen when it commercializes the backup-power units.
Beyond data centers, Honda added that it’s considering other applications, including “peak shaving.” This means Honda thinks industrial customers could use its generators at peak times, when electricity is priciest and grids are strained.
Honda said it aims to develop its proof of concept into a “new business model.” Yet, the pilot is also a convenient way for the company to talk up its new fuel cells. As battery-electric cars permeate the U.S. market, Honda has an interest in keeping hydrogen in headlines.
Honda’s aging hydrogen fuel cells get new life in data center by Harri Weber originally published on TechCrunch
As a Universal Hydrogen-branded plane, equipped with the largest hydrogen fuel cell ever to power an aircraft, made its maiden test flight in eastern Washington, co-founder and CEO Paul Eremenko declared the moment the dawn of a “new golden age of aviation.”
The 15-minute test flight of a modified Dash-8 aircraft was short, but it showed that hydrogen could be viable as a fuel for short-hop passenger aircraft. That is, if Universal Hydrogen — and others in the emerging world of hydrogen flight — can make the technical and regulatory progress needed to make it a mainstream product.
Dash-8s, a staple at regional airports, usually transport up to 50 passengers on short hops. The Dash-8 used in Thursday’s test flight from the Grant County International Airport in Moses Lake had decidedly different cargo. The Universal Hydrogen test plane, nicknamed Lightning McClean, had just two pilots, an engineer and a lot of tech onboard, including an electric motor and hydrogen fuel cell supplied by two other startups.
The stripped-down interior contained two racks of electronics and sensors, and two large hydrogen tanks with 30 kg of fuel. Beneath the plane’s right wing, an electric motor from magniX was being driven by the new hydrogen fuel cell from Plug Power. This system turns hydrogen into electricity and water — an emission-free powerplant that Eremenko believes represents the future of aviation.
The fuel cell operated throughout the flight, generating up to 800kW of power and producing nothing but water vapor and smiles on the faces of a crowd of Universal Hydrogen engineers and investors.
“We think it’s a pretty monumental accomplishment,” Eremenko said. “It keeps us on track to have probably the first certified hydrogen airplane in passenger service.”
Aviation currently contributes about 2.5% of global carbon emissions, and is forecast to grow by 4% annually.
The Universal Hydrogen-branded plane also relied on jet fuel. Notice the Pratt and Whitney turboprop engine under one wing. Image Credits: Mark Harris
The test flight, which was a success, doesn’t mean entirely zero-carbon aviation is just around the corner.
Beneath the Dash-8’s other wing ran a standard Pratt and Whitney turboprop engine (notice the difference in the photo above), with about twice as much power as the fuel-cell side. That redundancy helped smooth a path with the FAA, which issued an experimental special airworthiness certificate for the Dash-8 tests in early February.
One of the test pilots, Michael Bockler, told TechCrunch that the aircraft “flew like a normal Dash-8, with just a slight yaw.” He noted that at one point, in level flight, the plane was flying almost entirely on fuel cell power, with the turboprop engine throttled down.
“Until both motors are driven by hydrogen, it’s still just a show,” said a senior engineer consulting to the sustainable aviation industry. “But I don’t want to scoff at it because we need these stepping stones to learn.”
Part of the problem with today’s fuel cells is that they can be tricky to cool. Jet engines run much hotter, but expel most of that heat through their exhausts. Because fuel cells use an electrochemical reaction rather than simply burning hydrogen, the waste heat has to be removed through a system of heat exchangers and vents.
ZeroAvia, another startup developing hydrogen fuel cells for aviation, crashed its first flying prototype in 2021 after turning off its fuel cell mid-air to allow it to cool, and was then unable to restart it. ZeroAvia has since taken to the air again with a hybrid hydrogen/fossil fuel set-up similar to Universal Hydrogen’s, although on a smaller twin-engine aircraft.
Mark Cousin, Universal Hydrogen’s CTO, told TechCrunch that its fuel cell could run all day without overheating, thanks to its large air ducts.
Another issue for fuel cell aircraft is storing the hydrogen needed to fly. Even in its densest, super-cooled liquid form, hydrogen contains only about a quarter the energy of a similar volume of jet fuel. Wing tanks are not large enough for any but the shortest flights, and so the fuel has to be stored within the fuselage. Today’s 15-minute flight used about 16kg of gaseous hydrogen — half the amount stored in two motorbike-sized tanks within the passenger compartment. Universal Hydrogen plans to convert its test aircraft to run on liquid hydrogen later this year.
A Universal Hydrogen module. Image Credits: Mark Harris
Eremenko co-founded Universal Hydrogen in 2020, and the company raised $20.5 million in a 2021 Series A funding round led by Playground Global. Funding to date is approaching $100 million, including investments from Airbus, General Electric, American Airlines, JetBlue and Toyota. The company is headquartered just up the road from SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, with an engineering facility in Toulouse, France.
Universal Hydrogen will now conduct further tests at Moses Lake. The company will work on additional software development, and eventually convert the plane to use liquid hydrogen. Early next year, the aircraft will likely be retired — with the fuel cell heading to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
Universal Hydrogen hopes to start shipping fuel cell conversion kits for regional aircraft like the Dash-8 as soon as 2025. The company already has nearly 250 retrofit orders valued at more than $1 billion from 16 customers, including Air New Zealand. John Thomas, CEO of Connect Airlines, which plans to be the first U.S. carrier to use Universal Hydrogen’s technology, said the “partnership provides the fastest path to zero-emissions operation for the global airline industry.”
Universal Hydrogen isn’t just producing the razors — it’s also selling the blades.
Almost all the hydrogen used today is produced at the point of consumption. That’s not only because hydrogen leaks easily and can damage traditional steel containers, but mainly because in its most useful form — a compact liquid — it has to be kept at just 20 degrees above absolute zero, usually requiring expensive refrigeration.
The liquid hydrogen used in the Moses Lake test came from a commercial “green hydrogen” gas supplier — meaning it was made using renewable energy. Only a tiny fraction of hydrogen produced today is made this way.
If the hydrogen economy is really going to make a dent in the climate crisis, green hydrogen will have to become a lot easier — and cheaper — to produce, store and transport.
Eremenko originally started Universal Hydrogen to design standardized hydrogen modules that could be hauled by standard semi-trucks and simply slotted into aircraft or other vehicles for immediate use. The current design can keep hydrogen liquid for up to 100 hours, and he has often likened them to the convenience of Nespresso units. Universal Hydrogen says it has over $2 billion in fuel service orders for the decade ahead.
Prototype modules were demonstrated in December, and the company hopes to break ground later this year on a 630,000-square-foot manufacturing facility for them in Albuquerque, New Mexico. That nearly $400 million project is contingent on the success of a previously unreported $200+ million U.S. Department of Energy loan application. Eremenko says the application has passed the first phase of due diligence within the DOE.
Some experts are skeptical that hydrogen will ever make a meaningful dent in aviation’s emissions. Bernard van Dijk, an aviation scientist at the Hydrogen Science Coalition, appreciates the simplicity of Universal Hydrogen’s modules, but notes that even NASA has trouble controlling hydrogen leaks with its rockets. “You still have to connect the canisters to the aircraft. How is that all going to be safe? Because if it leaks and somebody lights a match, that is a recipe for disaster,” he says. “I think they’re also underestimating the whole certification process for a new hydrogen powertrain.”
Even when those obstacles are overcome, there is the problem of making enough green hydrogen using renewable electricity, at a price people will be prepared to play. “If you want to get all European flights on hydrogen, you’d need 89,000 large wind turbines to produce enough hydrogen,” says van Dijk. “They would cover an area about twice the size of the Netherlands.”
But Eremenko remains convinced that Universal Hydrogen and its partners can make it work, with the help of a $3 per kilogram subsidy for green hydrogen in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. “Of all the things that keep me awake at night,” he says, “the cost and availability of green hydrogens is not one of them.”
Universal Hydrogen takes to the air with the largest hydrogen fuel cell ever to fly by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch
Enlarge (credit: David McNew/Getty Images)
In a huge hangar in Quonset Point, Rhode Island, welders are aiming blazing torches at sheets of aluminum. The hulls of three new ships, each about 27 meters long, are taking shape. The first will hit the water sometime in the spring, ferrying workers to service wind turbines off the New England coast.
The US barely has an offshore wind sector for these vessels to service. But as the Biden administration accelerates a plan to decarbonize its power generation sector, turbines will sprout along its coastline, creating demand for services in shipyards and manufacturing hubs from Brownsville, Texas, to Albany, New York.
Senesco Marine, the shipbuilder in Rhode Island, has almost doubled its workforce in recent months as new orders for hybrid ferries and larger crew transfer vessels have come in. “Everybody tells me recession in America is inevitable,” says Ted Williams, a former US Navy officer who is now the company’s chief executive. “But it’s not happening in shipbuilding.”
Enlarge / A man fills the tank of his car with hydrogen at a station of the Ad Astra Rocket Company in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, on January 19, 2022. Former astronaut Franklin Chang is confident that in 10 years Costa Rica, his country, will be different. He hopes it will be much richer and cleaner, a product of green hydrogen technology, which he has been researching and developing since 2011. (credit: Ezequiel Becerra/AFP via Getty Images)
Franklin Chang-Díaz gets into his car, turns on the radio, and hears the news about another increase in the price of gasoline. But he sets off knowing that his trip won’t be any more expensive: His tank is filled with hydrogen. His car takes that element and combines it with oxygen in a fuel cell that works like a small power plant, creating energy—which goes into a battery to power the car—and water vapor. Not only will Chang-Díaz’s trip cost no more than it did yesterday, it will also pollute far less than a traditional gasoline-powered car would.
Chang-Díaz would like to have a public hydrogen station nearby whenever he needs to fill his tank, but that isn’t possible yet, either in his native Costa Rica or in any other Latin American country. He ends up instead at the hydrogen station he built himself, as part of a project aimed at demonstrating that hydrogen generated with renewable energy sources—green hydrogen—is the present, not the future.
A physicist, former NASA astronaut, and the CEO of Ad Astra Rocket Company, Chang-Díaz has a clear vision. Green hydrogen, he believes, is a fundamental player in lowering emissions from transportation and converting regions that import fossil fuels—such as his small Central American country—into exporters of clean energy, key to avoiding the catastrophic effects of global warming.
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