HyperSolar believes it is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the opportunities presented by California’s new, planned ‘hydrogen superhighway’, involving the construction of enough stations to allow a driver of a hydrogen car to travel with ease around the entire state.
The California Energy Commission (CEC) recently announced a plan to invest $20 million in the project. At present, there are only 10 hydrogen-fuelling stations in the state, though that is still more than any other state in the US.
Most of the existing stations are clustered in the Los Angeles and San Francisco regions but support vehicles throughout the state. The investment from the CEC is anticipated to support the addition of nearly half of the 100 planned fuel station additions, the next to be constructed being in October in the city of Coalinga, located in the San Joaquin Valley.
According to California Energy Commissioner Janea A. Scott, the ultimate goal is to match the number of stations with the number of cars coming in, whereupon the market would take over.
California’s state regulations require each station to “demonstrate a plan for sourcing at least 33 percent of production energy from renewable resources”, stressing the importance of ‘green hydrogen’ as opposed to ‘brown hydrogen’ which is created from natural gas. HyperSolar is anticipating that it will be able to fill this void with its renewable hydrogen technology as it continues to progress towards achieving the water-splitting voltage needed to commercialize in real world systems.
“The ‘hydrogen highway’ has long been considered to be an ambitious and out of reach goal, but it has now become a reality” said Tim Young, CEO of HyperSolar. “As major auto manufacturers including Hyundai, Toyota and Honda continue to roll out hydrogen cars, it is imperative that these fuelling stations are completed to support widespread consumer adoption. California will serve as the model for the rest of the country in terms of infrastructure, and we believe our technology will support the growing demand by producing completely renewable hydrogen at or near the point of distribution, in this case, a fuelling station.”
HyperSolar’s technology is based on the concept of developing a low-cost, submersible hydrogen production particle that can split water molecules using sunlight without any other external systems or resources – acting as artificial photosynthesis. The company is developing a breakthrough, low cost technology to make renewable hydrogen using sunlight and any source of water, including seawater and wastewater.
Unlike hydrocarbon fuels, such as oil, coal and natural gas, where carbon dioxide and other contaminants are released into the atmosphere when used, hydrogen fuel usage produces pure water as the only by-product. By optimising the science of water electrolysis at the nano-level, HyperSolar’s low cost nanoparticles mimic photosynthesis to efficiently use sunlight to separate hydrogen from water, to produce environmentally friendly renewable hydrogen. This low cost method to produce renewable hydrogen will enable the company to increase distributed hydrogen production for renewable electricity and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
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