There was no better day than Wednesday to open the Douglas County PUD’s $27 million hydrogen production facility.
Why? Well, it was 10/8. Or, 1.008– the atomic mass of hydrogen. The facility’s ribbon cutting may have been held on National Hydrogen Day and in the middle of Public Power Week, but for General Manager Gary Ivory, it felt like Christmas.
“Being here, being able to commission the plant and bring it into operation, have a ribbon cutting … it’s been a successful process,” he said. “It’s a dream to have it online.”
Ivory was joined by about 90 attendees, including not only Douglas PUD Commissioners and ribbon-cutters Ronald Skagen, Molly Simpson and Aaron Viebrock, but also elected officials who helped pass needed legislation to support the project, and curious members of the public who participated in a Q&A.
The approximately 80-by-136-foot facility sits in the industrial Baker Flats area of East Wenatchee at what’s now called 190 Hydrogen Way. With it, Douglas PUD can produce hydrogen fuel for consumer and industrial purposes. At the PUD’s East Wenatchee Office on Valley Mall Parkway, hydrogen fuel is already sold alongside an electric vehicle charging station.
According to Ivory, there’s a lot of interest in the operation.
On the west side of the state, there are transit agencies with fuel cell buses on the road who get their fuel from California. Hydrogen also gets supplied to places like Amazon warehouses that use hydrogen-powered forklifts. Metal coating companies and gasoline purification processes use hydrogen.
Project Manager Todd Vibbert explained that the plant is not fully operational yet as they work through some issues with valves, so contracts will be held off for a few weeks.
“If we get it up and operational, that will be a success,” Ivory told NCWLIFE. “If we’re able to sell the hydrogen in a market, that will be a success. I think those two big things are what we’re focused on now, being able to produce it reliably and also, meet the demand for hydrogen in the region.”
As previously reported by the Wenatchee World, Douglas PUD harnesses its excess energy from the Wells Dam hydroelectric project to produce and sell the hydrogen. The hydrogen is made by taking water and putting it through a device called an electrolyzer, which splits oxygen and hydrogen.
The PUD’s facility is considered 100% renewable because it uses hydropower to produce the hydrogen. During the open house, Senior Distribution Systems Engineer Len Anderson explained there are several different ways to produce hydrogen, and a main method is called steam methane reformation, or SMR. This method splits the molecules of natural gas and is considered non-green, as carbon dioxide is emitted in that process.
“We’re electric power producers, we wanted to keep things pure,” Anderson said. “This one is very pure. No waste. No extra byproducts. Just splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen, nothing else. So it’s very clean, very green.”
The process to open the facility began in 2019. At the time, public utilities did not have the authority to produce hydrogen.
Ivory went to then-12th District Sen. Brad Hawkins, who introduced Senate Bill 5588, which unanimously gave the public utilities authorization to do so. The Clean Energy Transformation Act, which requires Washington state utilities to be completely emissions free by 2045, passed the same year.
In October 2019, the PUD bought 109 acres of former orchard property in Baker Flats for the hydrogen facility. The following April, the first 5-megawatt hydrogen machine was purchased from Cummins Inc. for about $9.5 million.
Initially, hydrogen production was expected to begin in 2024. However, changes in building requirements and other factors delayed the effort.
The facility is able to produce two tons of hydrogen per day. The plant is designed to fill tube trailers and the ground storage outside the building is engineered to hold about a day’s worth of production. Anderson estimated that about eight to 10 tube trailers could fill up per day.
At least, that is the estimate for the first phase.
Ivory said there are capabilities to add more equipment to expand production within the facility. Before that can happen, there are some financial considerations that need to happen ahead of the next phases.
“We would like to have some secure offtake of that hydrogen guaranteed before we start to continue to invest,” Ivory said. “But we’re seeing a strong demand for the hydrogen in the region, so it’s likely that we’ll start moving forward.”
