Nuvera Fuel Cells

By Bill Mitchell, VP of Marketing
Nuvera Fuel Cells

This past Tuesday, I had the opportunity to take part in a Massachusetts Hydrogen Association Clean Energy Forum entitled “Creating a Clean Transportation Future”. Along with me on the panel were Stephen Costa of the U.S. Department of Transportation, and Sheila Lynch of the Northeast Advanced Vehicle Consortium.

About 50 people were in attendance for the discussions. Maybe it was a result of our high gas prices, or our economic troubles (or both), but based on the feedback from the audience, there was lot of interest in how we could most effectively and expeditiously transition ourselves off of imported oil and towards a form of transportation that is more sustainable, that also keeps money inside the U.S. (rather than flowing to other areas of the world).

My presentation dealt mostly with the identification of early markets that are not only interesting as markets unto themselves, but that can also act as a catalyst to accelerate the introduction of clean transportation. Because Nuvera is a fuel cell company, as one can imagine, I kept my comments in the area of fuel cell vehicles. The basis hypothesis of my talk was as follows: I believe that not only is the fuel cell forklift market interesting from a business standpoint, but this is also an early market that can accelerate the adoption of fuel cell cars.

To make the case for my hypothesis, consider the following. As shown in the graph below, a typical forklift drive cycle is very similar to an urban drive cycle that a fuel cell car would encounter. Because of this similarity, the fuel cell technology and system design between the forklift and the car will, by necessity, be similar (the car having more power, of course).

In a given year, a fuel cell forklift will operate for approximately 5,800 hours. If these hours are integrated into an automotive drive cycle, a year of forklift operation effectively simulates approximately 125,000 miles of driving. In this sense, you can consider the forklift operation as an accelerated durability test for a fuel cell car. During this year of operation, the forklift will need to be refilled about 700 times, and it will consume about 1000 kg of hydrogen.

Get a few thousand fuel cell forklifts in operation and the numbers start to add up. Very quickly you will have a lot of field data that can be directly translated to the automotive fuel cell market. Before the first fuel cell car ever “hits the streets” we could have millions of equivalent miles of data and operation in the forklift market. Further, the hydrogen dispensing experience would directly translate so that by the time fuel cell cars come about, the hydrogen dispensers will have been in operation for several years, performing hundreds of thousands of successful refueling events.

Early market applications like the fuel cell forklift market will help develop the technology and supply chain required for successful fuel cell cars, and educate customers to the advantages of fuel cells and hydrogen. Without a doubt, this will help accelerate the future of clean transportation.

Overall, the audience agreed with my hypothesis. What do you think?

Mass High Tech featured an article on the fuel cell industry in Massachusetts which included an interview with Nuvera’s Bill Mitchell. Check out the article here.

The article included a quote from Bill, which stated, “We in the industry are still suffering from a ‘fuel cell hangover’ from a lot of missed promises from a few years ago.” Read the article to get the full picture!

What do you think of the fuel cell industry? Still having a hangover?

By Bill Mitchell, Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Nuvera Fuel Cells

It all started out innocently enough; an email from a friend who wanted to get a few entrepreneurs in the cleantech market space together for a little dinner, a couple of beers, and end the evening off by a trip to “a very cool scientific art studio”.

Dinner was good and the beer better, but things really got interesting once we got to the studio. As it turns out, the “very cool scientific art studio” was the creation of a scientist turned artist by the name of John Bullitt. He graduated in 1980 with a degree in physics from Grinnell College, where he built the college’s first seismograph. After receiving an MA in geophysics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1982, he joined the research staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he continued postgraduate studies in geophysics and conducted basic and applied research into the nature of seismic wave propagation in the Earth’s interior.

Using his scientific background, John aggregated seismic data collected from listening posts around world and over many decades. He then synchronized the data, speeds it up and plays these now-audible “Earth Sounds” on a 3 dimensional sound stage, which he calls the Deep Earth Dome. The seating area is surrounded by speakers, placing the audience at a simulated center of the earth. It is a truly unique experience – combining earth science with art.

Click here for a Boston Globe article on Bullitt’s work, and here for a sample of what the earth dome sounds like (only in stereo, so you will not get the spatial sensation of sitting in the center of the earth). In the recording, time has been compressed 10,000-fold; the entire 3-minute recording spans 3 weeks of real Earth time. You will hear earthquakes that now sound metallic and hollow, which is an effect of the waves bouncing around the inside of the planet. In other recordings, you could clearly hear ocean storms (which sounded like white noise) moving around the earth.

After we got over the initial shock and awe of what we were listening to, we started to have a discussion with John to understand how long these recordings have been taking place, and whether or not anyone has tried to use them as a way to “visualize” the effect of global warming on the increase of seismic activity or on the number and intensity of ocean storms. Although there has been no effort on this to date, John admitted it might be interesting to look into.

As the discussion and listening continued thorough the evening, I was struck by the sense of how alive the planet is, and that we are affecting it thought our pollution. If you listen carefully in John’s recordings, you can hear the sounds of the tides moving - it sounds like the earth breathing. Hopefully, we can keep the environment and the earth healthy so that it continues to breathe for many future generations to come.