The Big Island is on the verge of testing three hydrogen-fueled buses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s been sitting on that verge for more than five years, but, according to Riley Saito, with the Hawai\u2018i County Department of Research and Development, just a few more tweaks are all that\u2019s needed before the hydrogen buses are added to the county\u2019s Hele-On fleet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At least two of them, anyway.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those two are 19-passenger vehicles that were supposed to be used as shuttles for visi- tors to Hawai\u2018i Volcanoes National Park. In August, the Hawai\u2018i County Council approved resolutions authorizing the mayor to accept the donation of the two buses \u2013 \u201c2012 F550 ENC Aero Elite\u201d buses, outfitted to run on hydrogen \u2013 from the state\u2019s surplus property office. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the Department of Energy\u2019s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) noted that in 2018, the cost of a hydrogen bus averaged $1.92 million, the county is getting them practically for free through the state\u2019s Surplus Property Office. That agency received the buses from the National Park Service as a donation.\nAll the county pays is $500 per bus as a\n\u201cservice and handling fee\u201d to the Surplus\nProperty Office.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just what the county will pay to put these\nvehicles on the road is uncertain. The only\nhydrogen filling station on the Big Island\nis at the Natural Energy Laboratory of\nHawai\u2018i Authority (NELHA), on the Kona\nside. Saito told Environment Hawai\u2018i <\/em>that\nthe NELHA hydrogen station was not yet\npermitted to operate by the county Fire\nDepartment.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n While hydrogen buses are touted as zero-emission, the process of generating hydrogen uses energy. The NELHA facility relies on power from the HELCO grid and the HELCO power station closest to NELHA is an oil-fired plant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In June, the Hawai\u2018i County Council held an informational hearing on the status of hydrogen buses. Council members were told then that a third hydrogen bus \u2013 a 29- passenger, brand new Ford F550 Eldorado \u2013 was on O\u2018ahu and ready to be delivered to the county. That cost of that vehicle was $707,500, paid to US Hybrid by the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies (HCATT), a state agency run through the High Tech Development Corporation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Margaret Larson, the transportation specialist at the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism\u2019s Energy Office, could not identify any facility that routinely uses hydrogen buses in Hawai\u2018i. Some had been proposed for shuttles at the Honolulu airport, but none is operating there yet. Alan Yonan, with the Energy Office, said that HCATT \u201chas retrofitted several military vehicles with hydrogen fuel cells for use at Hickam Air Force Base.\u201d \u2014Patricia Tummons <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Big Island is on the verge of testing three hydrogen-fueled buses. It’s been sitting on that verge for more than five years, but, according to Riley Saito, with the Hawai‘i County Department of Research and Development, just a few … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[459],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-october-2019"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}