Recognize Your Leaders

Submitted by: APWA Fleet Services Committee Nominee: Dan Lutz, Fleet Manager, Operations Division of the Public Works Department, City of Beloit, Wisconsin Leadership Traits: Initiative; Collaboration; Managing Change; Leading a Team

an Lutz, City of Beloit Fleet Manager, has always been involved in the managing of and care for the City’s vehicles. He provides direction to the Fleet and Stores work groups in the Operations Division of Public Works in order to establish efficient and effective delivery of Fleet and Stores services by providing City departments with safe, reliable, economical and environmentally sound products and transportation.

The last several years the buzzwords have been “sustainability” and “greener technology” which created a paradigm shift. In 2008, as a result of researching hydrogen boosters on the Internet, Dan built and installed a hydrogen booster on his personal 2004 Dodge Ram to see if the technology really worked. His first test drive resulted in increasing his mileage from 11.1 miles per gallon to 21.9 miles per gallon.

In November 2008, Dan became a Certified Technician in the field of this Hybrid and Hydrogen Fuel Technology. He took the results of his personal experiment to Chris Walsh, Operations Director for the Public Works Department, and asked, “What do you think about running your fleet on water?” By December 2008 the City of Beloit was installing Hydrogen Electrolyzers on a few of their vehicles for testing purposes.

In early 2009, the Hydrogen Electrolyzer technology started changing from Wet Cell to Dry Cell configurations. After preliminary testing of the new Electrolyzer designs in a few of the City’s vehicles it was clear that the technology had

great potential, but the Electrolyzer design had many flaws that needed to be addressed.

In the spring of 2009 Dan met Professor Marc Anderson from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Dan and Professor Anderson developed a Pilot Program with the university to address the issues that the City of Beloit was experiencing with respect to the new Electrolyzers the City was using in their fleet. For the Pilot Program Dan was requested to design and build an Electrolyzer that would incorporate one of the university’s proprietary nanoparticle coatings for the purpose of corrosion control and enhanced gas production.

To accomplish this Dan was asked to co-teach Professor Anderson’s fall 2009 Interengineering 160 class. Having first-year engineering students assist in the designing and building of a Hydrogen Electrolyzer using advanced technologies was a bit of a challenge, but the outcome was incredible.

The new Electrolyzer design and coating process produced a Hydrogen Electrolyzer that will more than likely resolve many of the issues that this technology has been plagued with for several years.

Under Dan’s management the City of Beloit Hydrogen Project has drawn both local and national attention from numerous media sources; community leaders from all over the country have visited their facility to view their Hydrogen-assisted vehicle and ask questions about their progress. Their willingness to share the technology with others resulted in the September 2010 APWA Click, Listen & Learn, “Can Hydrogen Boosters Improve Your Agency’s Fuel Consumption?”

In 2011 and 2012 both the U.S. Department of Energy and the State of Wisconsin Energy Office awarded the City of Beloit grants to continue the research and development for this technology.

As an innovative-thinking manager for an innovative-thinking community, Dan has worked very diligently with leaders in the Hydrogen on Demand technology industry and partnering with the University of Wisconsin to further this technology.

Dan and the City of Beloit are now in their fourth year partnering with the University of Wisconsin to further advance this technology and have seen positive results of the work.

To quote Dan Lutz: “This technology has come a long way in the last four years with many technical advancements and design changes, but it is still not ‘Grandma proof’; developing and refining new technologies can be exciting and challenging, but there are still questions to be answered and issues that need to be addressed.”

What started out as an initiative to make the City of Beloit’s fleet of vehicles a bit more sustainable is turning out to be advancements in Hydrogen on Demand technology that could have global impacts.