As part of Washington state's recently proposed capital budget for the next biennium, Lewis County Transit is set to receive approximately $2 million to help fund a new hydrogen fuel production facility.
That project, titled the Port of Chehalis Hydrogen Fueling Station, is set to be built on 8 acres leased on Port of Chehalis property — hence, the name. The new site is set to receive the first pieces of vital equipment May 19 and begin construction in earnest in June.
Once the site is operational, Lewis County Transit plans to use it to provide hydrogen for as many as six hydrogen-fueled buses by the end of 2025. The buses will begin operating on city routes in and around Centralia and Chehalis. Any spare fuel could be sold to generate money to continue expanding the operation, according to Lewis County Transit.
The $2 million set to be delivered by the Washington state Legislature pending Gov. Bob Ferguson's signature is the last bit of funding needed to cover construction costs.
The project first received funding in 2021 with $2.55 million in state funding and $1.8 million through the TransAlta Coal Transition Grant Program. According to Joe Clark, executive director for Lewis County Transit, the money and some other smaller sums were used to buy the equipment for the new facility.
If the project continues as planned, the facility will receive its last bit of necessary equipment in August and begin production and operations of its first three buses in September. Three additional hydrogen-fueled buses are set to be delivered in October.
The new production facility, located along Interstate 5 south of Chehalis, is expected to produce nearly 400 kilograms of hydrogen fuel each day that it is operational. It would double as a storage and fueling station for the six hydrogen buses and eventually will have a depot to store them.
“That allows then for that storage unit to release gas back to the dispenser and for us to fuel right there on site in the port of Chehalis,” Clark said. “And so we are going to be one of the first transits in the world making and dispensing our own hydrogen.”
The three buses that Lewis County Transit already owns have 37.5-kilogram tanks and will have a range of about 325 miles. The three new buses will be equipped with 50-kilogram tanks, giving them a longer range of roughly 450 miles, Clark said.
To produce the needed fuel, the new hydrogen production facility will take advantage of electrolyzer equipment produced by a California-based company called Ohmuim. The technology creates hydrogen fuel through a process called proton exchange membrane electrolysis that separates hydrogen and oxygen, turning H2O into H2 and O, more commonly referred to as hydrogen and oxygen.
The hydrogen comes out pressurized at about 500 PSI and is then stored at even higher pressures around 500 bar or more than 7,000 PSI in order to increase how much hydrogen can be stored, while the oxygen is simply released into the air of the outdoor facility.
“It’s all outside, so the vent stacks can vent that entire system in two to three seconds, so if there was some kind of leak or over-filling or whatever the case may be, hydrogen just goes into the air, grabs an oxygen molecule, becomes H2O again,” Clark said. “So very, very safe, very, very environmentally friendly. There's no greenhouse gasses from our buses. You can drink the water that comes out of their tail pipes.”
Despite hydrogen production not producing carbon emissions, it has been criticized in the past for its use of large amounts of energy. For example, the company that produces the electrolyzer Lewis County plans to use labels the equipment as a 900-kilowatt PEM electrolyzer, noting that it takes nearly one megawatt of energy to operate which, as hydrogen facilities go, is on the small side. For comparison, that's about how much power the average home in the U.S. uses each month.
The energy-intensive projects are often fueled by energy grids that rely on fossil fuels, but since the Lewis County facility plans to use energy from the Lewis County Public Utility District, which gets its power mostly from the Bonneville Power Administration, which relies heavily on hydroelectric power and other renewable resources, the new facility will be considered green hydrogen, meaning it is powered by renewable energy.
Another green hydrogen facility is currently under construction in Douglas County and is labeled a five-megawatt facility.
Lewis County Transit hopes that the smaller facility will allow it to scale up the size of the operation slowly as need grows. The project has relied on grant funding to be established, but Clark said that the project will be eligible for tax credits and government reimbursements.
With low operating costs and the increasing interest in hydrogen in the Pacific Northwest, Lewis County Transit could also sell excess hydrogen to other transportation facilities or for research purposes. Money saved or even profits from the program would then go back into the program.
“That net profit will go to expansion of the facility,” Clark said. “Because, ultimately, we’d like to get to about three and a half megawatts.”
