Source: North New Jersey.Com

Source: North New Jersey.Com
[May 20, 2006]

To get to the cutting edge of alternative energy in New Jersey, travel a two-lane mountain road, turn left at a cluster of old-fashioned mailboxes, amble across a wooden bridge and snake up a gravel driveway.

There, on a 12-acre lot in East Amwell Township, sit 10 cylindrical fuel tanks – waiting for the day Mike Strizki's four-bedroom colonial will become New Jersey's first hydrogen-powered house.

Once it's running, the home's solar-and-hydrogen system will make its own energy.

Three years after receiving a state grant to design the system, Strizki is close to reassuring officials his project is safe – that he isn't assembling a potential H-bomb in the foothills of Hunterdon County's Sourland Mountains.

"Some people are afraid of hydrogen," he said. "Hydrogen is no less safe than propane or any heating fuel. In fact, I think it's safer."

Across the country, others are rallying around hydrogen power.

Hydrogen fuel cells are already powering flashlights, laptops and video cameras. A handful of homes around the nation as well as some industrial buildings and college campuses in New Jersey run at least partially on hydrogen.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a "hydrogen highway" with fueling stations for hydrogen-powered cars. The federal government, meanwhile, has funded a $1.2 billion program to develop affordable hydrogen vehicles and commercial power installations.

Still, many in America's fossil-fuel-addicted society doubt that hydrogen will ever be a viable -- aka affordable -- alternative.

Misperceptions about hydrogen's safety are among the biggest barriers to its becoming a widely used alternative energy, said Patrick Serfass, spokesman for the National Hydrogen Association.

"You can have the best technology out there, but if people don't have faith in it, you won't get far," he said.

No easy changeover

Hydrogen's biggest advantage is its abundance on Earth. Forget OPEC, drilling in the Arctic or splitting atoms at nuclear plants, hydrogen can be stripped out of a water or methane molecule, even extracted from coal or algae.

But storing and delivering it is a challenge. Explosion concerns arise when hydrogen is stored as a high-pressure gas, which is often done in industrial settings to shrink its volume. Storing it in low-pressure tanks requires a lot of space – something that isn't practical for most homes.

Safety isn't the only problem. Using hydrogen as a fuel for cars and homes will require substantial changes in infrastructure and engines.

"This is almost an indescribably huge undertaking we're talking about," said Lyle Rawlings, a chemical engineer who is Strizki's neighbor and business partner.

The two men run a solar-panel installation company and have joined in a second venture -- Reaction Sciences of Long Branch – that is seeking to overcome hydrogen's problems.

The technology that makes hydrogen energy possible -- fuel cells -- has been around since the 19th century. It is still being perfected. The fuel cells that power some industrial buildings and college campuses in New Jersey can't run on their own – they need natural gas or other fuels to generate the hydrogen.

At Rutgers University, researchers are trying to build a fuel cell that can be more cheaply scaled to the size needed. Lisa Klein, a science and engineering professor who is leading the project, believes it will be years before hydrogen replaces a significant chunk of the fossil-fuel market.

"There have to be some fundamental breakthroughs and new technologies before we see that happen," she said.

It also will require a lot of help from the government, she said. "The powers that be in the petroleum industry aren't going to give up their monopoly anytime soon," she said.

Cost remains obstacle

Since September, energy experts, entrepreneurs and academics have been debating whether New Jersey should open its doors to this emerging industry. Called the Hydrogen Learning Center, the group was created with a $200,000 grant from the Board of Public Utilities.

"It's a question of whether New Jersey wants to deploy its resources to supporting this industry," said Scott Weiner, director of the state's Center for Energy, Economic and Environmental Policy. "I don't hear anybody saying hydrogen is not a fuel of the future. The question is when."

Hydrogen already has a toehold in the state.

The U.S. headquarters of BOC, one of the world's largest hydrogen companies, is in Murray Hill. Its chief business is supplying hydrogen to businesses for use in manufacturing, but it has a small division developing fuel cells for forklifts and as backup power sources for cellphone towers and utility companies, said Mike McGowan, the company's director of hydrogen energy.

In Eatontown, Millennium Cell is working on portable power fuel cells -- called hydrogen batteries -- for use in laptops, flashlights and video cameras. It has military contracts to build long-lasting batteries for battlefield operation kits.

Officials at both companies predict the nation will be slow to wean itself from its reliance on gasoline-fed engines and coal and nuclear power plants.

The chief reason is cost. Back when it was trying to develop fuel cells for vehicles, Millennium Cell patented a method of storing hydrogen in a liquid or salt form, said Rex Luzader, the company's vice president of government relations. But it would have cost the energy equivalent of about $25 a gallon – making today's $3 per gallon for gasoline seem like a bargain

"We cannot realistically compete against the gasoline market and the electrical grid," he said.

McGowan thinks it's more likely that hydrogen will first be used to power buildings in remote parts of the world where there is no power grid.

Emphasis on safety

Strizki, however, believes people need to think big -- and stop focusing so much on cost.

The civil engineer has helped design two hydrogen cars, a boat, a plane and highway signs for the state Transportation Department.

Now, there's his hydrogen-powered house. In the summer, solar panels combined with a geothermal system will harness energy from the ground to run his air conditioning and appliances.

The solar energy also will power a machine that converts water into a hydrogen gas to be stored in tanks. In the winter, that hydrogen will fire up a fuel cell that will keep heat and electricity flowing.

Nothing will be emitted from this mini power plant, Strizki said.

On the day he flips the switch, he'll need a shipment of hydrogen gas. After that, the house will make its own.

But first, he needs to convince officials his project is safe.

Officials in his community said they didn't have the expertise to rule on his permit request. Then Strizki had to enlist a building code expert to explain his plans to state officials. The state is studying some of the electrical details, but has signed off on the mechanics of the plans.

The cost of the hydrogen system could exceed the $225,000 grant Strizki received from the BPU.

That price tag is way too high for the mass market. His goal is to get the power on and look for ways to reproduce it more cheaply.

"Technology is always going to cost more in the beginning," he said. "But over time the costs go down as you figure out how to make something more efficient and how to mass-produce it."