SMUD opens solar-powered fueling station

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA - The Sacramento Municipal Utility District will formally open a solar-powered hydrogen fueling station for fuel-cell vehicles near its headquarters on S Street.

The station, a joint venture of SMUD, BP, Ford Motor Company and the U.S. Department of Energy, is designed to demonstrate fuel cell electric vehicles and the generation of hydrogen from alternative resources.

The station produces hydrogen using power from the large solar panels. The solar panels generate electricity and an "electrolyzer" uses that energy to separate water into hydrogen to make clean fuel for powering the vehicles.

The hydrogen will be used in SMUD's own fuel-cell vehicles and similar vehicles owned by others.

The solar panels produce 80 kilowatts of electricity, equivalent to what is needed to power about 40 single-family homes, or enough hydrogen for about 14 fuel-cell vehicles.

Related News

Cape Town settlement

Does Providing Electricity To The Poor Reduce Poverty? Maybe Not

NEW YORK - The head of Swedfund, the development finance group, recently summarized a widely-held belief: “Access to reliable electricity drives development and is essential for job creation, women’s empowerment and combating poverty.” This view has been the driving force behind a number of efforts to provide electricity to the 1.1 billion people around the world living in energy poverty.

But does electricity really help lift households out of poverty? My co-authors and I set out to answer this question. We designed an experiment in which we first identified a sample of “under grid” households in Western Kenya—structures that were located…

READ MORE
severe winter and grid

Canadian Electricity Grids Increasingly Exposed to Harsh Weather

READ MORE

eskom powerlines

South Africa's Eskom could buy less power from wind farms during lockdown

READ MORE

The Four Corners Power Plant

Renewables surpass coal in US energy generation for first time in 130 years

READ MORE

Symantec Proves Russian

READ MORE