Automotive

Toyota to build megawatt-scale renewable power and hydrogen fuel plant in California

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Hydrogen produced at the new facility will be used to fuel the Toyota Project Portal heavy-duty hydrogen fuel cell Class 8 trucks at its Long Beach Port facility
Toyota
Hydrogen produced at the new facility will be used to fuel the Toyota Project Portal heavy-duty hydrogen fuel cell Class 8 trucks at its Long Beach Port facility
Toyota
Toyota will use the hydrogen generated to not only fuel the Project Portal big truck, but also incoming Mirai fuel cell cars arriving at the port for delivery
Toyota
The Tri-Gen plant will produce enough hydrogen to power about 1,500 vehicles on an average daily use cycle
Toyota
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At the Los Angeles Auto Show, Toyota has announced it will build the world's first megawatt-scale carbonate fuel cell power generation plant with a hydrogen fueling station in California. This 'Tri-Gen" facility will use locally-sourced agricultural bio-waste to generate huge amounts of power, lots of hydrogen, and clean water. Yes, that probably means cow poop.

The plant is scheduled to go online in 2020 and will generate approximately 2.5 megawatts of electricity, which is equivalent to the amount used by 2,350 average homes in the region. The electricity will be used to power Toyota Logistic Services' (TLS) operations at the Long Beach Port, making it the first Toyota facility in North America source all its power from renewable sources.

Additionally, the plant will and produce 1.2 tons of hydrogen every day, which is enough to power about 1,500 vehicles on an average daily drive. The hydrogen generated on-site will be used in all Toyota fuel cell vehicles at the port, from Toyota Mirai fuel cell cars being delivered through the site, to the Toyota Project Portal heavy-duty hydrogen fuel cell Class 8 truck. Currently, a large on-site hydrogen storage tank fills those needs and is refilled with hydrogen produced elsewhere and shipped in by Air Liquide.

"Tri-Gen is a major step forward for sustainable mobility and a key accomplishment of our 2050 Environmental Challenge to achieve net zero CO2 emissions from our operations," says Doug Murtha, group VP of Strategic Planning at Toyota.

The Tri-Gen facility is being treated as a proof of concept for a 100 percent renewable, localized hydrogen generation plant, running at scale. If the plant proves successful, Toyota says that it can be copied at nearly any location.

Source: Toyota

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4 comments
Martin Winlow
How very silly to waste all that energy messing around with H2 when they could just use *electric trucks* and charge them up directly, getting 2-5 times the efficiency (unless the H2 is an otherwise unwanted by-product of the system - which seems unlikely). In this case, even the range issue of EVs would not be a problem.
BanisterJH
If it needs local agricultural bio-waste, then future locations might best be convenient to sources of that, as I expect the hydrogen would be easier to transport than the waste. If it could run off human bio-waste, that could be very nice, as the world gets more sources for that all the time. OT3rdH if it can run purely off BS, exactly one location instantly leaps to the forefront of my mind.
Adrian Pineda
The cleanest, most cost efficient way to produce hydrogen fuel is with nuclear power. Any other methods are less efficient and will produce more expensive fuel. I speculate nuclear power plants pollute the air less than those in this story making hydrogen fuel.
George Kafantaris
No Tesla BS at Toyota: “We only announce what we are sure of. More pilot test vehicles will come, and then we scale up quickly.” — Andrew Lund