Renewable Energy Coming to Humboldt

By: Carlos Pedraza

The Humboldt Transit Authority (HTA) is creating the first hydrogen bus fleet in Northern California. The project is being funded by a $38.7 million grant from the California Department of Transportation.

There are dozens of partners, some private and others public. One of those public partners is located right on California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt—the Schatz Energy Research Center (SERC). Since 1989, the SERC has been researching renewable energy, specializing in hydrogen energy.

The project is the first of its kind. The SERC has been the main consultant to the HTA on hydrogen energy. Jerome Qiriazi,Transit Planner for HTA, described the SERC as, “immensely helpful; they really are the technical consultants on navigating the hydrogen world.”

The Schatz Energy Research Center has worked on many projects related to renewable energy from solar panels to hydrogen. The project is the end result of decades of research and engineering.

Renewable energy in batteries is one of the greatest challenges because batteries do not store or transfer 100% of the energy inside of them. Dr. Lehman explained that a good battery will transfer 90% to 95% of its energy but the hydrogen batteries can only transfer 35% to 40%.

“You typically don’t use hydrogen to store electricity, just to store it, but when you use it in a bus, or a truck, or a car to drive that car down the road that’s a different story,” Lehman said.

Hydrogen creates a high capacity of energy that can power large vehicles when stored in a tank and combined with captured oxygen from the air. The fusion of elements within the fuel cell generates the power to move forward.

Students at Cal Poly Humboldt who regularly take the bus, like Nick Nielsen, support the project. “Like grains of sands, creating a big mountain, little changes to policies like that help,” Nielsen said.

Deepak Tripathi, a graduate student working on hydrogen research at the SERC, explained how hydrogen is used to create energy. Hydrogen stored in the bus will be combined with oxygen from the air. These two come together in the fuel cells creating energy in the fusion. The energy is stored in a battery where the electricity is used when needed.

Dr. Peter Lehman, a Founding Director of the SERC, said, “The goal there was to demonstrate the use of hydrogen as a storage medium for renewable energy.”

Like any fuel source, hydrogen has to be collected, stored, and used. Although it is one the most common elements in the universe, it has to be purified in order to work efficiently as fuel. Otherwise it will damage the battery inside the vehicle.

Hydrogen is separated from methane, natural gas, or any compound with hydrogen, in a process called steam-methane reforming (SMR). The methane could be taken from natural sources like swamps and animal waste or fossil fuels like natural gas.

“Could be from digesters, as I said, or it could be normal natural gas, which is being supplied. You clean it, then you apply heat and electricity to it to breakdown the molecules and pass it through steam, and then you get hydrogen,” Tripathi said.

The SMR process is not a green source of hydrogen, as the CO2 separated from the methane is released into the atmosphere. An alternative process is the electrolytic hydrogen process (EHC).

In the EHC process, electricity is passed through water, separating oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen is stored and used as fuel with oxygen as the only byproduct released into the air. It’s a more energy intensive process with a higher cost, but the electricity can come from a green source such as wind or solar, making the EHC process a fully renewable source.

“The technology is not the thing which is stopping us but which technology can produce hydrogen at a cheaper price.” Tripathi said.

HTA is currently planning to use SMR hydrogen in liquid form, but Tripathi, as part of SERC, is researching the possibility of HTA producing its own hydrogen using the electrolytic process. Whether or not Humboldt County could provide the resources, the electric and water costs would first have to be calculated. pacity of the buses in order for the buses to complete the daily routes without needing to refuel as often and be able to travel the difficult roads.

The first trial bus won’t be delivered until fall of 2024. The fuel capacity will be modified to ensure the bus can travel at least 300 miles a day, so it can travel to places as far as Ukiah, CA. Qiriazi stated that a secondary goal of the project is to provide services to Mendocino County. While Amtrak and Greyhound provide transit to Mendocino County, HTA is planning to create a weekend route to Mendocino County.

The new bus fleet is planned to be delivered by early 2025. Each bus will cost $1.5 million as they have custom specifications to increase the fuel cell ca-

While HTA has approved the grant, the money has yet to be spent. The majority of it is planned to be used for the buses and infrastructure including hydrogen fueling stations, including some stations to be available to the public, and a transit center that will include commercial spots and housing. The amount of housing units that will be available is not clear as all plans are tentative, but the target demographic is expected to be mostly students of Cal Poly Humboldt and College of the Redwoods.

The project is moving forward, but no end date has been stated. Many of the plans are expected to change, but the end goal is for them to be complete before 2029. By then, the state of California will have mandated all public transportation to run on renewable energy.

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