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Below is the text version of the webinar titled "2nd International Hydrogen Infrastructure Challenges Webinar," originally presented on March 10, 2015. In addition to this text version of the audio, you can access the presentation slides.

Amit Talapatra:
All attendees on today's webinar are on mute, so please submit your questions via the question function, as shown here, and we will cover those during the Q&A at the end of the presentations. Since we have multiple speakers today, please indicate who your question is for when submitting your questions. With that, I would like to introduce Sunita Satyapal. She is the director of the Fuel Cell Technologies Office within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy. Sunita?

Sunita Satyapal:
Thank you, Amit. First of all, I would like to thank all of the participants and those calling in. As you know, we're doing this second webinar across continents, and so we realize it is 5 a.m. in California, 10:00 p.m. in Japan, and of course we have Europe, so once again, thank you for all the interest. We've received significant feedback that the first webinar was a success, and so we would like to continue this [inaudible]. Today, we'll be hearing from the participants and leaders of the 2nd International Workshop on Hydrogen Infrastructure and Transportation that was held on May 8 and 9, 2014. We would like to thank the host, again, of the workshop. It was held at Toyota Motor Sales Corporate Accessory Center in Torrance, California. There were over 70 international experts in attendance, and the workshop was designed really as a follow-on to the first workshop that was held in Berlin—we would like to thank our German colleagues—in June of 2013.

[Slide 4]

The goal was to identify challenges, potential solutions, share best practices and progress on the key issues facing hydrogen fueling infrastructure and fuel cell vehicles. Again, we would like to thank the European Commission, Germany, Scandinavia, Japan, and of course the U.S. colleagues. As I think many know, the recent announcements by the major car companies on fuel cell vehicles available for lease and soon for purchase have really increased the sense of urgency from the state, local, and federal government agencies. The workshop was focused on key areas—hydrogen fueling protocols, metering, quality, station hardware—and included experts from industry, international governments, national labs, from a number of international regions. They gave presentations, and then identified the challenges, the progress, through breakout sessions.

Given the fact that there is limited space at these types of hands-on workshops, the purpose of the webinar is to report the key findings, and in the spirit of openness and transparency to share the information from the workshop. So, it is now my pleasure to introduce the first speaker who will be Dr. Kiyoshi Yoshizumi, the director of the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Technology Group from NEDO in Japan. I'll turn it over now to Yoshizumi-san. Thank you.

Kiyoshi Yoshizumi:
Thank you, all of you. My name is Kiyoshi Yoshizumi. I am not doctor. I am in charge of R&D project hydrogen utilization at NEDO. First, I would like to thank you for your participation and contribution to this webinar. Here in Japan, we are having very exciting moment now. As you know, Toyota started to sell Mirai, and several companies also started hydrogen retail sales at the hydrogen refueling station, so FCVs and hydrogen at commercial stage. Still, we need more R&D on HRS in terms of cost and reliability. NEDO continues to promote R&D to address these issues. Therefore, I think this webinar is very valuable for discussion and information exchange among experts and engineers from leading countries and regions. NEDO will support such R&D, and I hope our activities will also contribute to this webinar to move it forward. Again, I thank you all, and I'm glad to join this webinar. Thank you.

[Slide 5]

Erika Sutherland:
Thank you very much. This is Erika Sutherland now speaking, and I am a technology development manager here at the Department of Energy. I will be taking us through the overviews for each region which was participating during the workshop. Hanno Butsch from NOW was kind enough to organize this webinar this time around but, unfortunately, he is unable to speak today, but he is on the line in case we have a specific question. Starting with the overview that we received from the European Commission—the Joint Research Center of the European Commission and the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking began the overviews during our meeting noting that the following were seen as significant barriers to hydrogen and fuel cell technology in their region, which was the high retail cost of vehicles, lack of infrastructure, and low level of consumer acceptance. The alternative fueling infrastructure task is working across the European Union toward common technical specifications for the infrastructure.

The AFI is the joint dialogue between the EC, the European Council, and the European Parliament, and is in the final stages of approval. Article 5 of that AFI addresses hydrogen. It requires that the member states adopt hydrogen infrastructure and must build an acceptable network with cross-border links by the end of 2025. A major challenge is that the SAE J2601 2014 document cannot be referenced to a European legal document. They must refer instead to an ISO or TS 20100 gaseous hydrogen fueling technical specification, and the hydrogen purity standard ISO 14687-2, and the connector standards. The TC 197 group is also working toward a less restrictive and, hopefully, therefore less expensive purity standard. Between the three FCHJU activities—H2MOVES, HyTEC, and SWARM—149 FCEVs and 6 stations will be deployed through 2016. Additionally, 46 buses and 8 bus stations will be deployed in the same timeframe. They are specifically working on three issues related to this workshop: legal metering of hydrogen, electro-chemical compression, and fueling protocols for temperature control during fast fills. The FCHJU is also involved in hydrogen safety sensors, safety analysis of leaks, and collection of safety incident data.

[Slide 6]

For Germany, Hanno Butsch of NOW delivered the updates. The National Innovation Programme for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology provides 700 million euros from 2006 through 2016 for funding in the area of transportation, hydrogen production, industrial applications, residential co-generation, special markets, cross-cutting issues, and innovative drive systems. The Clean Power for Transport Directive of the European Commission was once again mentioned, which is the same directive as the AFI presented by Pietro Moretto for the European Commission. With regard to the development of the hydrogen refueling infrastructure, the 50 hydrogen refueling station program of the Clean Energy Partnership, and now a project of the NOW, was presented.

The aim is to establish an initial hydrogen refueling station network of 50 stations throughout Germany by 2015. Currently, there are already 12 in operation, and 6 will be operational by the end of April 2015. Sixteen more locations are contractually fixed, and there are 20 that are in the final planning and negotiation phase. Also, there are six H2-Mobility members that are developing a joint venture to achieve a maximum of 90 kilometers between each hydrogen refueling station on the highways and with 10 hydrogen refueling stations in each metropolitan area. They are spending roughly 350 million euros to deploy the 400 hydrogen refueling stations by 2023.

The joint ventures and negotiation for the total funding amount—given the need for permitting stations, a guideline for approval of the hydrogen refueling stations has produced a website and a booklet for applicants and authorities to follow to deploy the hydrogen refueling stations. Efforts are also underway to develop an aligned European hydrogen infrastructure development plan. Once permits have been obtained, current delivery times for the stations could be between 9 to 12 months depending on the manufacturer providing the equipment.

[Slide 7]

For Scandinavia, the overview was given by Bjorn Simonsen of HyNor. The Scandinavian Highway Hydrogen Partnership was established in 2006 and includes member countries of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden and collaboration with Iceland. They have a target to have 300 stations and 200,000 fuel cell electric vehicles on the road by 2025. One advantage in the region is that the ZEV vehicle purchases are exempt from the registration tax, which can be 100 to 180 percent through this region. Also, they have greater than 400 million euro which have been spent on R&D in hydrogen and fuel cell technologies to date. By 2016, 19 hydrogen refueling stations are expected in operation. This includes 7 in Norway, 11 in Denmark, and 1 in Sweden. In Norway, all hydrogen is 100 percent renewable, and funding is not provided for entities using natural gas to produce hydrogen. On-site production of hydrogen via electrolysis is the most viable form of hydrogen production in Norway, and the market for ZEV vehicles is growing quickly. In 2013, roughly 8 percent of all new cars sold were already zero electric vehicles, and this is projected to reach 15 percent soon.

[Slide 8]

For Japan, you've already heard much of the activities there, but they recently released their Strategic Energy Plan, which identifies hydrogen as a very important secondary source of energy, and its production, transportation, storage, and utilization will all be promoted by the government. They have funding of 17.2 billion yen from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, METI, in 2014 for station development. They also supply R&D funding of 3.25 billion yen through NEDO. In terms of hydrogen refueling infrastructure, by the end of 2015, there will already be 100 stations in place; 41 are decided at present, and at the end of February nine are already operating commercially. In Japan, R&D focus is on regulation, standards, infrastructure, and hardware reliability and safety. One example would be the success of a demonstration project in 2014, which is now being used to complete the commercial installations.

[Slide 9]

Finally, for the U.S., we have several activities and policies in place, particularly in California. We recently had an eight-state MOU which puts into the zero-emission vehicle action plan to put 3.3 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2025. In California, there is a ZEV program in place intended to put 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road in California by 2025. We also have an activity, H2USA, which is a public-private partnership focused on advancing hydrogen infrastructure. It is organized to overcome the hurdles and barriers to deploying hydrogen refueling infrastructure in the U.S., and is organized into four working groups tackling specific challenges, including station hardware, station location, market acceleration, investing, and finance. The Fuel Cell Technologies Office has also opened the H-Prize, which is available—sorry, it's a prize of $1 million to be awarded to the developer of the home and community refueling technology which best meets the criteria posted and available on the website. The criteria relate to pressure, dispensing time, refuels per day, availability, and costs.

The Fuel Cell Technologies Office has also established the Hydrogen Fueling Infrastructure Research and Station Technology project, H2FIRST, which is led by Sandia National Lab and NREL national lab, which will focus on station qualifications, dispenser components research, and reference station design. Within the U.S., there is approximately $135 million per year in funding for fuel cell R&D through the Department of Energy, with an additional $60 million per year of funding for fuel cell technology deployments through other agencies. California recently announced $20 million a year from the California Energy Commission to build 100 stations in California through 2020. Current status—by 2016, 51 stations are planned for California, 8 are currently open, and 43 are in development. Additional activities are now underway in the Northeast. With that, I will turn things over to the technical portion of our talk, starting with Mr. Jesse Schneider from BMW North America. He is the leader of their codes and standards development. Jesse?

[Slide 10]

Jesse Schneider:
Hi. Good morning, good afternoon. This is Jesse Schneider. Yes, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. I thought it was a very interesting workshop. Regarding hydrogen fueling, one thing that was new at the time of the workshop was the release, or I should say the publication of actually two standards: SAE J2601, which standardizes the hydrogen fueling protocol, and SAE J2799, which standardizes the communications to assist in that fueling protocol. That was something that's very good in the fuel cell vehicle world to be able to commercialize hydrogen to have a consistent fueling protocol worldwide for all fuel cell vehicles. The ability to fuel all fuel cell vehicles between three to five minutes for fuel cell vehicles, or light-duty fuel cell vehicles with a 2 to 10 kilogram onboard storage range, is something that's been given through 2601.

It uses a standard look-up table-based approach with new features for robustness, and, in addition, it has been validated not only in the laboratory but actually in the field in three countries, or actually three continents, in Japan, in the United States, and in Europe. It also gives allowance for communications and non-communications, and just to simply state, the communications gives a higher SOC, but you still can get between 90 and 100 percent with non-communications, and 95 to 100 percent with communications. There is also an appendix for a non-normative alternative fueling method called the MC method, which has the potential to increase fueling time and also decrease the cooling energy. I just wanted to mention, it is correct, the Alternative Fuels directive cannot directly reference an SAE standard; however, there are many of those from the SAE team that are actually on the new group, which is called 19880-1, which is going to replace 20100 ISO standard for gaseous hydrogen fueling stations. There is an effort underway to harmonize and reference 2601 through that ISO norm, or standard. And if we could move on to the next slide.

[Slide 11]

Thank you. There was a lot of workshop members from across the world in these three continent regions, but what was really interesting was that the challenges are pretty international. They were pretty much, I wouldn't say the same, but they were very similar in the regions. The four top challenges is lack of a procedure—method—and equipment to certify station performance, meaning the fueling validation of SAE J2601-2014. There also is a lack of metering technology able to meet the weights-and-measures accuracy for legal sale of hydrogen. Interestingly enough, it's pretty much the same worldwide. Lack of standard acceptance criteria, and there is a high cost of fueling validation. To address this, I'm just going to list shortly the points that came out of the workshop.

These are the results of the discussions and, at the end, there was, I think, a really good result and a path forward, a plan forward. There's an effort to create a device to verify station performance for each market, a so-called station testing apparatus for fueling. There is also a development need, to speak, for test procedures and goals to certify stations. I know CSA is working on something, and ISO is working on a validation procedure, as well. There is also a need to actually have third-party testers for certification like natural gas or gasoline, and defined frequency requirements for certification and work within 19880-1, the ISO document.

Regarding metering technology, there is really a need for the government and the industry to work together to enable more accurate and affordable mass flow meters. The goal is one to two percent full-scale accuracy, which is important, and that's something that is underway right now.

There is also a lack regarding the station standard acceptance. It's important, especially to assist in permitting, that lessons learned are reported. It is also important to consolidate requirements, like in the form of a checklist, with the input from automakers and the stakeholders involved in approving stations, and also in the standardization area effort in ISO. Training and information is needed to help for the implementation of 2601, and also preparation for requirements on how to implement the alternative method, or the MC method, which is currently being worked on at SAE's Fuel Cell Committee.

Regarding costs of validation, it's important that there's developed combined hydrogen station testing apparatus for a one-step station acceptance, their metering quality, hydrogen quality sampling, I should say, fueling protocol, and modification, essentially, of fuel cell vehicle storage tanks for performance of testing. Governments have issued RFQs, or requests for funding, to find reasonably priced devices, and that's something underway in the United States with the H2FIRST. They have what's called the HyStEP device. In Germany, the Clean Energy Partnership has a device, and in Japan, there is a device worked on also at HySUT. Then, the last point here is to consider type testing at the time of station manufacturing.

Erika Sutherland:
Thank you very much.

[Slide 12]

Next, speaking to the quality, fuel quality work, will be Andres Fernandez Duran. He is the leader of hydrogen energy activities at Air Liquide Advanced Technologies. Andres? Andres, I believe you may still be on mute. All right, let's move to metering, and then we'll see if we can get Andres back.

[Slide 14]

For metering, Dr. Will James, who is our safety codes and standards lead here at the Fuel Cell Technologies Office at the Department of Energy will be covering our activities. Go ahead.

Will James:
Thank you, Erika. It's a pleasure to be with everyone on the phone. I wanted to provide an overview of the breakout session for metering. Anyway, we had participants from the U.S., Japan, Scandinavia, European Commission, and Germany. Here, over the next few slides, I will just give a brief overview of the results of that breakout session. In the U.S., as many of you know, we have the NIST standard based off Handbook 44, which requires 1.5 percent accuracy, but in this very early adoption period, California has made an exception and developed a tier approach where they looked at basically relaxing the standard for the near-term deployment. For example, we have accuracy classes that range from 10.0 to 5.0, 3.0, and 2.0. As you go down into the lower accuracy classes, the accepted tolerance gets tighter, as well as the maintenance requirements. The 10.0 accuracy class is set to expire at the end of 2017, and the 3.0 and 5.0 accuracy class is set to expire at the end of 2019.

Germany gave an overview of their current data collection efforts through the Clean Energy Partnership, where they showed several sets of data where they looked at comparing the station data versus actual vehicle data. In the graph that is shown here, we see that based on three different OEMs that the accuracy, or the measure at the station, is very good. In total through this Clean Energy Partnership, more than 2,000 field data points have been collected. As you see, you can see 11 percent of the refuelings have a deviation below 2 percent, 44 percent of the refuelings have a deviation below 5 percent, and 20 percent of all refuelings have a deviation above 10 percent.

Currently, Germany and Japan have no requirements. In Japan, they are looking to develop a self-guideline in fiscal year 2015, which will be starting April 1. Then, from there, they will develop hopefully by 2019 a Japanese measurement instrument through the Japanese Measurement Instrument Federation, another self-standard, and move to JIS by somewhere between 2023 and 2025. Then, finally, not listed here, I just wanted to mention a little bit about the JRC effort. They presented a pre-normative research effort, some initial data collection through some of their fast-fueling efforts, and that was presented by Pietro Moretto from the JRC. So if we go to the next slide.

[Slide 15]

To kind of summarize our findings from the breakout session, we broke it down into three categories, looking at the definition of metering accuracy, research and development needs to measure flow, and some international cooperation opportunities. Just to highlight a few from each category, we felt that there could be a need to standardize fueling procedures, or keep standardized fueling procedures at least for the near term; understand the decrease in hydrogen loss after filling through nozzle development; and repeatability and accuracy should be improved for meters.

Going down to the research and development area, we would like to see 100 percent public-funded R&D, basically a round-robin competition for the various flow meter suppliers.

Then, going into international cooperation, there could be an opportunity to either standardize or harmonize the requirements between the NIST Handbook 44 and an international organization called International Organization of Legal Metrology. They have the R139 standard. Then possibly arrange a workshop for all weights and measures people, and then, as I mentioned in the R&D area but also under the international cooperation, the international round-robin R&D flow meters came up. There was mention of one possible landing spot for this is through the International Partnership for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells in the Economy, Regulation Codes and Standards working group, and then more on the regional level, possibly organize regional workshops for that. With that, that completes my overview on metering.

Erika Sutherland:
All right. Thank you, Will. We seem to be having some trouble with the audio from Andres, and it appears to be on our side.

Andres Fernandez Duran:
Hello?

Erika Sutherland:
Oh, excellent.

Andres Fernandez Duran:
Can you hear me now?

Erika Sutherland:
Yes, we can.

[Slide 12]

Andres Fernandez Duran:
Okay, perfect. Okay, thank you. Hello, everybody, and sorry for the disturbance. I'm going to give you an update about the hydrogen quality activities we had. I'm working for Air Liquide in Germany, and I also lead hydrogen quality work by the CEP, the Clean Energy Partnership. Let me start with one thing that probably you all know, but hydrogen quality for fuel cell vehicles is defined in the ISO document 14687-2, which is harmonized on the SAE side on the 2719. I think that has been standardized for some time. I think that's an important message for the industry, having a harmonized standard already when we are addressing commercialization short-term, even if the standard is a controversial one, as there are some discussions, of course, about this being a bit stringent from the gas side and not really from OEM side. But I think it's important to have one document we are working all together towards the future.

During the workshop, we exchanged the status on the different countries, and we came up with a couple of topics that we need to work on, and, as a summary, let me summarize those in two subjects: the technical feasibility of these standards and the commercial feasibility of these standards. With regard to the technical feasibility, it was mostly agreed by most of the countries that even though we have some methods to analyze the impurities that we need to, they are very costly and time consuming, and some of them only doable at a very high-quality lab site. That's really not what we need for commercialization, so we need to work on that. That was a common understanding of most of the countries present.

We need to work on the reliability of the analysis, mostly in regard to repeatability, so it's nice to have analysis possibilities, but we need to be able to reproduce them, so it's the general opinion that we need to work on that. Good news, however, that there is a common agreement that we will probably not need to address all the impurities at all fuel sources, meaning we don't need to test the same components when we have water electrolysis as a production of hydrogen as when we have steam reforming, for example. With regard to commercial feasibility of these standards, it's a common understanding I think for some time already, and I think we all know that, that the analytical costs of these kind of standards could be a show-stopper for commercialization, so we need to work on a couple of subjects to avoid that.

Long-term, mid-term, there are some activities eventually starting at ISO to review the standard. We'll see whether it could be relaxed or it needs to be kept like that, so that's a discussion that we'll follow at ISO. And short-term, we have some activities with regard to the methodology that we need to apply for quality assurance. This could be the key enabler for reducing the cost short-term and moving towards commercialization. For that, there's an activity already going on at ISO too, where most of the countries represented in this workshop are participating. Then, we need also to work on the sampling methods, the containers and the frequency mostly, which is a bit different from country to country, or is not fixed yet in some of the countries, like for example in Germany, so we are doing that on demand, for example, on our side. This is also a key subject for the cost reduction of the hydrogen quality assurance.

With this work, this is a summary of the discussions now. If you go to the next slide please.

[Slide 13]

We got together after all the presentations to summarize a bit what are the top challenges and what are the activities that we need to tackle to address these challenges. We identified the top four for this presentation today, which the top one understanding for the group is the lack of in-line monitoring capabilities, so right now we don't have that on the quality we need, or the quality we need to address the ISO standard. So, we need to develop affordable continuous on-site or in-line measurement capabilities. Now, independently of the controversial discussion whether this needs to be addressed at the station itself or at the production site, but we'll need some in-line analysis for these components.

The top two was actually the cost reduction for the analytical methods or for the analysis itself, so one of the subjects we want to tackle, and I think that's being done at ISO in the activity I just mentioned, is to reduce the number of chemical species that you need to analyze depending on the source that you are using. Also, of course, to develop some methods to do so not so costly as it is today. On the top three, we identified as a challenge the standardization of sampling. For that, we wanted to have a joint initiative between the ASTM and ISO, so having these organizations, for example, working together on the standardization of the sampling and sampling equipment and procedures. This could be one of the subjects that could help us on that, or, for example, adopt the ISO standards globally, if possible, so there's a couple of other activities that we can tackle on that subject.

As a top four, we identified station quality control subject, which could be a challenge, so we need to identify very short-term the critical parameters to monitor online, whether at the source or at the station, and address these. On that, of course, we need to also harmonize our efforts for the development of best practices and quality control, and that was the common understanding also of the group, really need to be done at ISO where most of the participants and the relevant countries are working together. So, these are the top four challenges and the activities related to it. I think you have a couple more on the full report, if needed. That will be it for my side.

Erika Sutherland:
Thank you, Andres.

A. Fernandez Duran:
You're welcome.

[Slide 16]

Erika Sutherland:
Next, presenting hardware will be Bjorn Halvorsen from HyOP Norway. He is the chief technology officer there at HyOP. Bjorn?

Bjorn Halvorsen:
Yes, thank you. You're hearing me?

Erika Sutherland:
Yes, thank you.

Bjorn Halvorsen:
Good. My name is Bjorn Halvorsen, as you said. I did a presentation on the behalf of Scandinavia in Torrance last May on the issue of hydrogen station hardware. The conclusion in many ways from the hardware is quite common for all parts. As the Japanese, the Europeans, and the Americans, we have a lot in common, and that kind of conclusion is shown on these two diagrams. Firstly, I think that [inaudible] of compressors is a big challenge. The compressors are not as reliable as we would like, and can influence the total availability of the stations, which I think we also computed on, is not good enough for a real commercial situation. A lot of availability data was communicated, and it showed an availability of 60 to 95, 98 percent, and the compressors are the main issue, both when it comes to cost and when it comes to time for maintenance, and also when it comes to availability. I think we'll jump to the next page.

[Slide 17]

A lot of text here. The question on maintenance and equipment is what is actually responsible for failures, and compressors is one of the main issues. When we looked at this long list, it was kind of a challenge in Torrance that we met there, we are not the manufacturers of equipment, we are the ones that use the equipment, or we put equipment together at a system supplier, or we just use the hydrogen station. So, a lot of these issues that were taken up here are related to the manufacture or the development of equipment. Then, if we look at the list, if you look at the compressors, I think compressors, they are seen upon as too costly and not robust enough. And when it comes to gaseous storage, I think price is costly. Price is one issue, and another issue is lifetime. What can be done to make sure the lifetime, or say something about that.

When it comes to dispensers, I think, again, price of a few very special items that there are very few suppliers of is a challenge, and the use for customers; a lot of people don't find it easy enough to handle the thing, and the user-friendliness of the hardware is actually seen upon as a challenge. When it comes to the cooling part of the station, the chiller part, it seems like energy consumption is a concern, and of course the chiller itself could be a quite challenging part to have a good availability on, also. I think that's all I planned to say. Thank you.

[Slide 18]

Erika Sutherland:
Thank you very much. Then, just to wrap up here, the report from the workshop has all of the priorities and needs mentioned here, as well as additional priorities and needs identified. While this was not an IPHE meeting, we do plan to work with IPHE to host the report on their website, and it should be available there shortly. We, the participating regions, are already working independently and in collaboration to address the common challenges that we've identified here. We also continue to collaborate on these priorities, and we're in the process of planning our next information exchange to monitor the status, share lessons learned, and identify the key areas for further development.

I would really like to thank everyone who presented today for taking the time to do so. I know it is both early and late for many of you, and I'd like to remind our participants to go ahead and submit your questions now, and please identify who your question is for, if possible. Thank you. With that, going to questions and answers, it looks like the first question is for Mr. Schneider. The question is, "Will vehicles with greater than 10 kilograms of storage be able to fill at car dispensers?" Jesse?

Jesse Schneider:
Yes. I should mention that the SAE standard, the J2601, is actually a family of standards. In fact, the first one that's published is a light-duty vehicle, so there is a heavy-duty vehicle standard that's in the works. It's called J2601-2, which enables fueling above 10 kilograms for buses. It's currently a technical report or guideline. For light-duty vehicles, though, there is a limit in terms of fueling, but for buses and greater than 10 kilograms, there's another document that's coming.

Erika Sutherland:
Thank you. The next question is about the targets. It's not directed to a specific person.

Sunita Satyapal:
The question was, "Most of the stated targets seem much too optimistic both in terms of the number of vehicles and the number of stations. Is this achievable?" is the question, and I know we have at least one OEM, if Jesse again would like to take a stab at that in terms of the number of vehicles or the targets.

Jesse Schneider:
I'm sorry, maybe I didn't hear it acoustically. Are you referring to the number of vehicles from the ZEV mandate, or which one are you …

Sunita Satyapal:
It was just a general question, so unless the participant who questioned the question can submit a clarification, it was more general about the number of vehicles and the number of stations, are they too optimistic?

Jesse Schneider:
Oh, I see. Well, I could just comment that on the station side, all the regions seem to be working on 50 stations or so in the near term by 2017, and in terms of toward 2020, there's supposed to be about 100 in California, there's supposed to be in 2023 about 400 in Germany from 150, and there is over 100 stations in the works in Japan. Regarding vehicles, it's hard for me. I can't speak for the competitors at all, but I know that we've heard that the Toyota Prius is—actually, the Toyota Mirai, excuse me, is already in production. They talked about numbers of 3,000 a year, and there's a projection, there's actually a report from a Northeast region that's being coordinated, also, and supported by the DOE that has projections of fuel cell vehicles out to 2025. I think that's a better reference to quote than one automaker.

Sunita Satyapal:
Thank you, Jesse. I think I'll pause to see if any of the other government reps would like to respond, as well. But I think, in general, as we get feedback from industry on the rollout for vehicles, there are various assessments and analyses on the number of stations that would be required through collaborations. Of course, there is significant state activity, for example in the U.S. with California, and now some of the Northeast states, there's additional activity in Hawaii, and so there's ongoing assessment of the number of stations needed to support the number of vehicles that would be rolled out. Of course, those get refined over time, so I think more of a general comment, it's not that there is a specific target. It changes depending on the number of vehicles and the status of the technology and so forth, so I think that was sort of a general response. We'll go to the next question now, which relates to—"Has there been a sensitivity analysis that's been performed which considers the cost of hydrogen storage at different pressures?"

Erika Sutherland:
This is Erika Sutherland. I can start taking that question. One, for clarification, I'm not sure if the question is asking about on-board storage pressures, forecourt storage pressures, or delivery pressures, but I'm going to guess that it's about on-board storage pressures. There is some cost analysis looking at different storage pressures. It is a different answer if you're trying to reduce the cost onboard the vehicle and the amount of hydrogen stored for the range, versus if you're looking at the cost at the fueling station. There will be a detailed presentation on this at the Annual Merit Review, which will be the week of June 8 in Arlington, Virginia. Those presentations are posted online following the meeting. The presentation will be given by Dr. Amgad Elgowainy of Argonne National Lab. You can look for those results then.

Sunita Satyapal:
I think, in general, obviously the industry is set to move forth with 700 bar on-board hydrogen storage for the early market rollout, and of course, at DOE anyway, we do continue our work on low-pressure materials-based hydrogen storage. So there's a two-pronged approach, both high-pressure storage tanks and then, if the question is also referring to very low-pressure options with materials-based storage, that R&D of course is still in an early stage of development that continues for potential long-term options to reduce pressure. We'll go to the next question.

Will James:
The next question is to Andres on fuel quality, and the question is a clarification question about the fuel quality standard. "It's the understanding that at what stages are the constituents required to be analyzed? It was said that normally in most situations in the standard, it's usually at commissioning, and then, depending on the local requirements, either in the case of a dispute or whatever the local requirements are. Can you please clarify, and whether all the constituents have to be analyzed?"

Andres Fernandez Duran:
Yes. Hello. Right now, the situation is that the ISO standard only defines the constituents that are needed to be checked, and what level of constituents we need to not damage the fuel cell. In fact, there is no statement right now about whether you need to analyze them all, but that's exactly what we are trying to do now at the ISO level, is to say, OK, perhaps we can try to reduce the cost and the effort needed for warranty in there, the quality by doing quality assurance in a way that we can say, depending on the source, for example, we don't need to really demonstrate that all the constituents are at the level of the ISO standard. But we can already not do some of the analyses. For example, if you have water electrolysis, you don't need to do necessarily sulfur, or something like that, so that's being discussed right now at ISO.

That's the one topic, but right now, at this stage, standardized it is not. It is intended to be included in the new ISO standard with regard to hydrogen infrastructure. I think the number, if I remember right, is 19880-1, so it will be a section of it, so that's the idea, and meet long-term, eventually, depending on the field data we gather, we might tackle the revision of the standard itself. But that's still an open question, to what level the industry wants to do it, and to what extent, so that's the one question. The other question is, if I understood right, when do you need to do the analysis and how often, right?

Will James:
Yes, that's correct.

Andres Fernandez Duran:
Right now, that depends a lot on the country. For example, in Germany, I can tell you there is no really regulatory requirement to do any of this. We are right now under a demonstration project, if you want to call it like that, and there is no regulatory requirement for that. For example, we do it, typically, all the partners in the CEP, we do a sample after commissioning or during—before we do commissioning, so before we fill the first vehicles, but this is not an obligation, and the same for afterwards. During operation, we do it as needed, on demand. We are starting a couple of campaigns in the CEP on testing some of our stations, but that has not been linked to a regulatory requirement. In other countries, it's different, so that differs really regionally a lot, still.

Erika Sutherland:
Thank you. We have another question which is directed toward our colleague from Germany. "Are there any national programs in place to subsidize fuel cell vehicles?"

Hanno Butsch:
I'm going to take that. This is Hanno Butsch from NOW. So far, no, there are no direct subsidy systems in Germany in place. The only thing we have had so far is a business car tax exemption for battery electric mobility, but it didn't include yet fuel cell cars, but this is under discussion as well.

Erika Sutherland:
Thank you. The next question we have is, "Is there a standard in place for hydrogen fueling stations?" and I'm going to direct this toward our safety codes and standards lead here, Will James.

Will James:
Right now, from the international arena, we're in the process of developing an ISO standard. It's going to be the 19880 standard. Actually, Jesse Schneider is co-leading that with the European contingent out of France, so maybe if Jesse wants to say a little bit more about the international standard on stations, as well?

Jesse Schneider:
Yes, thank you, Will. Can you hear me?

Will James:
Yes.

Jesse Schneider:
Okay, great. Well, exactly what Will said, there is a standardization effort underway internationally called 19880-1, and it covers the fueling station general specification regarding safety. It also covers interface, including fueling and fueling validation, and it covers also safety concepts like safety distances. At this point, there is also discussion regarding risk assessments. The document is going to be published as a guideline, a TR, this year, and it will be published as a standard at the end of 2016 in order to meet the timing internationally, including for the Alternative Fuels Directive, the AFI.

Erika Sutherland:
Thank you, Jesse. Also, there was a question about additional information and additional contact information. The report, as I said, will be hosted by IPHE on their website, so it will be publicly available from the workshop, and that will hold additional information. If there is a question that we do not get to in this Q&A, please go ahead and send an email to the organizers, which you will have from the registration email you received, and we will do our best to address all of your questions. We have just a few more minutes here, so I will take one or two last questions. There is a question about current cooperation with Polish companies, and it says, "It is currently one of the leading countries in the region of Europe, so is there any collaboration with Poland, currently?" Perhaps Hanno could help with that one.

Hanno Butsch:
Yes. I obviously cannot talk about industry cooperation with Poland, but in the AFI, the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure directive, it's clearly stated in Article 5 that there should be cooperation with neighboring countries. In this course, there is an informal government support group, which is open for all countries to join in order to exchange their experiences and their strategies on the development of the national policy framework. In this course, we tried to collaborate with Poland, but the current status is they are not yet involved but we are working on that.

Erika Sutherland:
Thank you.

Sunita Satyapal:
I think Jesse was also going to comment.

Erika Sutherland:
Yeah, one more comment from Jesse on vehicles and stations.

Jesse Schneider:
Yes. Sorry, I have coffee in hand now to answer—address the question from before. I think it's important to mention with regards to the different regions that there are on the automaker side, eight automakers have made announcements and partnerships to get hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on the road in commercial light, some of them in the near term, in 2015, all the way out to 2020. I think that should be mentioned with regards to the supply versus demand question on infrastructure. It also should be mentioned that there was a study by the California Air Resources Board on every automaker directly on what their projections are, and also what their commitments are to fuel cell vehicle production. The result of that was the roadmap for the hydrogen fueling infrastructure to the 100 stations in California, so I think there is a supply and demand discussion, and there is a need perhaps to readdress this one when more and more of the fuel cell vehicles are on the road for production.

Erika Sutherland:
Thank you very much, Jesse. All right. Unfortunately, we are out of time. As I said, you can send additional questions to the organizers and we will do our best to address them. I would like to thank everyone, once again, for participating today. I know it's a real challenge across all the different time zones, and thank you, again, to our collaborators in this work. This is really a key time moving forward with the infrastructure rolling out and the vehicles coming off the assembly lines, so thank you all for your efforts and continued collaboration.