From Switzerland to California (and everywhere in-between) fuel cell buses have become increasingly common over the past few years. They have become so common in fact that I usually don’t write about individual rollouts anymore and lump them together as I’m doing in this blog post.
In Switzerland there is a company called PostBus that will test fuel cell drives in their buses over the next 5 years in a route between the cities of Brugg in the Canton Aargau. A large portion of the money for this testing in being contributed from the Swiss Lottery Fund (winner, winner chicken dinner; loser, loser, you receive clean air – not a bad deal either way).
And, that’s not all. According to Postbus Switzerland, “The first hydrogen fuelling station for buses in Switzerland will be built by PostBus in the next few months. Service is expected to start up in the spring of 2012. Initially, the station will only be available to the fuel cell postbuses. However, at some point in the future the station may also be used to fuel other vehicles, including research vehicles of the Paul Scherrer Institute, another project partner.”
Now, moving onto California, Ballard will be providing the fuel cell systems to power two new hydrogen hybrid buses under the TIGGER (Transit Investments for Greenhouse Gas and Energy Reduction) Program. And you know the wonderful thing about Tiggers is that Tiggers are wonderful things. Their tops are made out of rubber. Their bottoms are made out of springs (with apologies to Winnie the Pooh).
No, seriously though, the Ballard fuel cell modules will be placed inside of SunLine buses that run out of Thousand Palms, CA. According to Ballard, “Ballard’s fuel cell module is a ‘plug-and-play’ product that permits system integrators to readily build clean energy buses at reduced cost. The fuel cell module incorporates sub-system components for humidification, hydrogen pressure regulation, hydrogen recirculation, water management, ventilation and controls.”
So, you can see from Switzerland to California, hydrogen bus rollouts are becoming quite common. If you would like to read more about hydrogen buses there are currently over 40 posts in this blog category.
Hi Kevion, nice post. where does the hydrogen come from, in the Switzerland case, if I may ask?
Here are some resources for Switzerland to check out:
http://www.swissworld.org/en/environment/vehicle_fuels/hydrogen/
http://www.empa.ch/plugin/template/empa/*/50343/—/l=1