I happened to be at Gaithersburg at the time (2008 April) and so was
fortunate to be able to sit in on a briefing that Lorelle Young, USMA's
President, was given by NIST on many matters. One of those was on the
dispensing of H2 in California, on which NIST had been consulted.
Lorelle and I thus had opportunity to comment on this as well as the
other matters. Three quantities are involved: system pressure, quantity,
and cost. The unit recommendations made by NIST were all metric, of
course. Apparently the current design is for two possible system
pressures; vehicles must be refueled from a facility that uses the same
pressure and there are thoughts of having the cars' GPS's automatically
indicate the nearest matching station.
Jim
Phil Chernack wrote:
> As far as I can tell, hydrogen has always be dispensed by the kg. Even
> the president made mention of it in a State of the Union address a few
> years back. When fuel cell cars become more widespread, I can't see
> any
> other unit being used to dispense hydrogen.
>
> Phil
>
> On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 12:45 AM, Victor Jockin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
>
> I've been doing some more digging on this issue, and I may have
> jumped the gun when I said that California law requires the retail
> dispensing of hydrogen fuel in kilograms. The "workshop" document
> I
> distributed a link to, which summarizes major elements of the law,
> has a bullet indicating that H2 is to be dispensed in kilograms.
> But the law itself, while using only metric units throughout its
> text (kilograms and metric tons) does not, as far as I can tell,
> explicitly require retail dispensing in kilograms. What it does
> require is that retailers report sales to the state in kilograms.
> Also, certain trigger points (the definition of a low volume
> retailer) are set in metric units. Here's the full bill that got
> signed into law:
>
>
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/05-06/bill/sen/sb_1501-1550/sb_1505_bill_20060930_
chaptered.pdf
>
> So a retailer who sold in pounds and reported sales to the state in
> kilograms would not, as far as I can tell, be in violation of this
> law. And of course, this law applies only in California.
>
> This just underlines my point that we need to be on top of this
> important emerging battlefront. There is still time to influence
> the future now, and we were handed an early tenuous victory by the
> CA legislature and some European oil companies. That lead could
> very easily vanish (and in my opinion, probably will) with a
> national retail build out of H2 stations. Someone within USMA needs
> to research this issue and start crafting a national strategy that
> will make the most of our limited resources and influence. I can
> try to help, but who else does these kinds of things within our
> organization? For example, what bills might be pending in other
> states? Are any other potential H2 retailers planning stations?
> Can NIST get involved (at least write opinions)? What can we do
> to
> cheer on Shell and BP for dispensing in kg's now? etc.
>
>
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(H) 931.657.3107
(C) 931.212.0267
