The sixth National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day took place on October 8, 2020, and OceanBased Perpetual Energy joined the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s (EERE’s) Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office in celebrating advances in hydrogen and fuel cells.
Interestingly, October 8 was selected as the official date for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Day, since it represents hydrogen’s atomic weight of 1.008.
Hydrogen and fuel cells have come a long way in recent years. Interest is ramping up across multiple end-uses, including trucks, maritime, rail, the public power grid, and industrial processes where the integration of hydrogen and fuel cells can add economic, environmental and energy resiliency benefits.
The amount of hydrogen fuel cell power shipped just surpassed 1 gigawatt, a third of a million stationary fuel cells are powering global operations, and more than 470 hydrogen stations are serving 25,000 fuel cells cars worldwide.
In the United States, more than 35,000 hydrogen fuel cell forklifts help move goods at supermarkets, warehouses, and logistics facilities, and 500 MW of stationary fuel cell power ensures cell phone towers and other critical loads stay on. Large-scale hydrogen-use applications are gaining momentum, and activities that demonstrate the value of integrating hydrogen and fuel cell systems in data centers, ports, and in steel making are also ramping up.
Obstacles remain to developing the hydrogen fuel cell market, such as cost, volume, and technology hurdles that would unlock its full potential. The U.S. Department of Energy is accomplishing this through a number of areas including H2@Scale—a vision to enable affordable hydrogen generation, transport, storage, and use in the United States.
As costs decrease thanks in part to H2@scale research at labs and demonstration activities with industry, hydrogen can more successfully be integrated into America’s economy and play a substantial role in emissions reductions and energy resiliency across multiple sectors.
Photoelectrochemical hydrogen production offers a promising route to affordable and sustainable hydrogen fuel by harvesting light from the sun and using water as feedstock. Researchers use a metric called solar-to-hydrogen (STH) efficiency as a standard way to evaluate PEC systems based on how effectively they convert energy from the sun into hydrogen. In 2016, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory broke a standing 18-year world record, demonstrating 16.2 percent STH efficiency over the previous 12 percent STH, which is well on its way to meeting the DOE target of 25 percent.
Since then, research efforts have continued to improve efficiency and durability of this technology through advanced and innovative materials. The DOE’s Fuel Cell Technologies Office within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy funded this work.
Other countries and regions have released roadmaps that highlight the role hydrogen plays in their energy future. Global initiatives, including the International Partnership for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells in the Economy, the Clean and Hydrogen Energy Ministerials, the International Energy Agency, and Mission Innovation are bringing countries together to share lessons learned and accelerate progress.
OceanBased invites readers to explore some of the resources on the DOE website and use them to increase awareness about how far hydrogen and fuel cells have come and what more needs to be done.
- You can follow the EERE on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedInand share their social media posts on hydrogen and fuel cells using #FuelCellsNow and #HydrogenNow.
- Increase your H2IQ by replaying the October 8 H2IQ Hour, which highlighted three H2@Scale demonstration projects in the U.S.
- Test your H2IQ by taking the hydrogen and fuel cell quiz and challenge your friends to do it as well!
- Learn about the types of jobs available in the hydrogen and fuel cell industry by using the career map.
- Keep up with global hydrogen and fuel cells activities by following @The_IPHE.
More information on hydrogen and fuel cell technology in the explainers below:
Young et al., “Direct Solar-to-Hydrogen Conversion via Inverted Metamorphic Multi-Junction Semiconductor Architectures,” Nature Energy 2 (2017): 17028.
Khaselev and Turner, “A Monolithic Photovoltaic-Photoelectrochemical Device for Hydrogen Production via Water Splitting,” Science 280, no. 5362 (1998): 425.