Daily Update From the Fuel Cell Seminar - Day Three
- From: "lkgeo1" <lkgeo1@xxxxxxx>
- Date: 16 Nov 2006 03:16:41 -0800
Daily Update From the Fuel Cell Seminar - Day Three
Publication Date:15-November-2006
06:30 PM US Eastern Timezone
Source:Kerry-Ann Adamson, Gemma Crawley and Mike Hugh:Fuel Cell Today
Wednesday morning of the Seminar opened with three simultaneous tracks;
transportation, high temperature fuel cells and low temperature fuel
cells. I chose to attend the transportation track. The session was well
attended despite the fact that some of the original speakers had
cancelled and been replaced with alternative presenters. The
presentations focussed heavily on the use of fuel cell systems in niche
transportation applications and the primary topic of interest was fuel
cell buses. The majority of speakers examined the performance of fuel
cell buses in various demonstration programmes as well as operational
experience with these vehicles and plans to deploy fleets across North
America and Canada.
The highlight of all the bus presentations was Leslie Eudy's speech
on harmonisation and sharing of data from international fuel cell bus
demonstrations. Eudy explained that in 2003 the U.S Federal Transit
Administration began an effort to form a fuel cell bus working group.
The goals of the scheme were to enhance the status of fuel cell bus
programmes, collate data from across various demonstrations and
coordinate better the results of such projects. Eudy highlighted
several challenges faced when implementing shared data collection
schemes and the efforts made to reduce these problems. The initiative
has so far held four workshops, established three levels of common data
collection across several bus programmes and continues to asses bus and
infrastructure performance.
Moving away from buses, Bruce Rothwell of Fuel Cells Canada gave an
excellent presentation on the Vancouver Fuel Cell Vehicle Programme.
The programme involves five vehicles, all of which are Ford Focus cars.
The objectives of the programme are to assess technology performance,
increase public awareness of fuel cell vehicles, address infrastructure
issues, demonstrate zero emission technologies and develop codes and
standards. The vehicles have been operating since April 2005 and the
programme will continue until March 2008 with a minimum target of 500
hours operation per vehicle per year of the scheme. Three fuelling
stations are also operated as part of the scheme. Rothwell gave details
of vehicle maintenance schedules, the wide range of partners and
organisations involved in the project and early performance data.
Overall, feedback from demonstration programmes and initial results was
positive, indicating that the various schemes were successful in
achieving their initial goals. The morning concluded with a
presentation from the Southern Fuel Cell Coalition focussing on its
aims and objectives and specifically on its fuel cell forklift
demonstration and the fuel cell shuttle bus data collection and
conversion programme.
.
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