Mississauga Might Get A Dozen Electrical Buses For The Price Of 5 Hydrogen Ones

Join day by day information updates from CleanTechnica on e-mail. Or comply with us on Google Information!

Just lately I revealed a perspective on the Canadian metropolis of Mississauga’s plan to pilot hydrogen buses for his or her transit system. It included international information on the excessive price and low reliability of hydrogen electrolysis and refueling methods and the excessive price and low reliability of hydrogen gas cell buses. Somebody requested the following apparent query: how a lot cash are we speaking about, and who could be getting it?

Comply with the cash, and on this case it’s as much as $36 million, way over the prices of buying and working electrical buses for equal service. (All greenback values on this article are in Canadian foreign money until said in any other case.)

Let’s begin with methodology. I’m a powerful proponent of Professor Bent Flyvbjerg’s reference class forecasting strategy to estimating the prices of initiatives. That is outlined in his finest promoting e-book with Dan Gardner from 2023, How Massive Issues Get Achieved. The methodology is straightforward:

• Get as a lot information on prices and length on historic initiatives just like the one proposed as doable
• Take the averages of prices and length
• Begin with that for the seemingly prices and length of your venture
• Regulate up or down provided that it’s completely clear that there’s a variance, for instance, half the gap of tunneling

As a observe, Flyvbjerg and co-authors lately revealed a paper on uniqueness bias, the idea that your venture is someway magically totally different than different, related initiatives, and how one can keep away from it. The summary:

“The paper explores “uniqueness bias,” a behavioral bias outlined because the tendency of planners and managers to see their choices as singular. For the primary time, uniqueness bias is correlated with forecasting accuracy and efficiency in real-world venture funding choices. We problematize the standard framing of initiatives as distinctive and hypothesize that it results in poor venture efficiency. We take a look at the thesis for a pattern of 219 initiatives and discover that perceived uniqueness is certainly extremely statistically considerably related to underperformance. Lastly, we establish how determination makers can mitigate uniqueness bias of their initiatives by what Daniel Kahneman aptly referred to as “determination hygiene,” particularly reference class forecasting, premortems, similarity-based forecasting, and noise audits.”

I encourage Mississauga’s transit planners to learn each the fabric on reference class forecasting and uniqueness and apply the learnings to the proposed hydrogen bus trial.

For full disclosure, a few of my materials seems in one of many chapters of Flyvbjerg’s e-book, I talk with him reasonably repeatedly and have labored professionally along with his agency Oxford International Initiatives. For additional context, I used to be a serious, advanced initiatives estimation subject material knowledgeable for one of many world’s largest expertise companies as a part of my skilled life for a number of years, and developed and utilized estimation to initiatives of as much as a billion USD in worth.

For the proposed Mississauga hydrogen bus pilot, we’ve got not less than some information from dozens of pilots and efforts around the globe, together with Quebec’s failed hydrogen automotive fleet and refueling, Whistler’s failed hydrogen buses, London’s failing hydrogen buses, and California’s failing hydrogen stations and bus fleets. The information is much from excellent. In contrast to Flyvbjerg and group, I’m not making an attempt a rigorous information assortment, cleaning, and statistical evaluation, however a extra tough and prepared indicative estimate. I encourage Mississauga’s transit operators, CUTRIC, and worldwide organizations, together with researchers related to the Oxford Centre for Sustainable Street Freight or RMI to carry out a extra rigorous examine.

For folks within the particulars of the worldwide hydrogen fleets, I encourage you to learn the article outlining extra sensible price and reliability within the earlier article.

For this train, I’ll estimate capital prices for all parts and upkeep and operational prices over 4 years for each 5-bus and 10-bus pilots. I’ll embody a situation for hydrogen electrolysis and a situation for grey hydrogen. I’ll additionally embody a situation for electrical buses as a substitute.

The electrolyzer and refueling system aren’t instantly aligned with the variety of buses, however the vary of prices for them is in step with international averages. As a reminder, the Quebec single refueling level for a single automotive at a time plus the related electrolyzer price $5.2 million, inside this vary.

Gas cell methods, together with humidity management, surgical-suite grade air filtration, 300 to 750 ambiance hydrogen tanks, temperature administration for hydrogen because it modifications stress radically, and temperature administration methods for water emissions in order that they don’t freeze, are costly, and signify 35% to 50% of the price of a gas cell bus. At current, I’m allocating all of these prices to the gas cell system and therefore to the gas cell vendor, not the bus vendor. Including the gas cell system and bus strains is the overall price of the buses. International information is aligned with these prices.

The Canadian authorities would fund as much as 50% of this capital expenditure by its $2.75 billion zero emissions transit fund and program. The next distributors would probably be the recipients of the overall worth.

HTEC is a Canadian hydrogen refueling station agency which supplies the electrolyzers in BC and the only one in Quebec Metropolis. It will probably get the $1 to $3 million for the refueling system and may additionally get the electrolyzer system.

Air Merchandise manufactures grey hydrogen from pure gasoline in Sarnia for industrial customers and in addition supplies electrolyzer methods, and so would possibly get the electrolyzer system cash.

Ballad Energy Techniques is a Canadian gas cell firm and would obtain most or all the gas cell methods cash. Nonetheless, Ballard loses $55 million yearly on average, and $1.3 billion in complete since 2000, with out ever turning an annual revenue. As with all the different short-lived pilots Ballard has participated in globally over 25 years, this won’t result in it being a going concern. As one other observe, Ballard’s inventory value peaked in March 2000, and is at the moment buying and selling at 1.25% of that peak. The corporate can’t be thought-about a dependable supply of data on something besides the agency value of shopping for its gas cells in a signed contract.

Mississauga, like most transit organizations in North America, will get its buses from New Flyer, so the Ballard prices and remainder of the bus prices will seemingly circulation by them. Bus producers love hydrogen as a result of the buses price a lot extra in order that income and income might be larger, at the same time as prospects find yourself hating them due to their prices and lack of reliability.

International expertise with electrolyzers makes it clear that they like to run in industrial settings full time. Working them half time has led to upkeep points. Small-scale methods with out devoted help workers, corresponding to Quebec’s system, have extra outages for longer than industrial scale methods with devoted operations workers. Quebec’s hydrogen refueling system was out of service for a full third of the overall hours of the 4 years of the pilot, and 50% of these outages have been attributed to the electrolyzer.

California’s refueling station expertise, the place largely grey hydrogen was delivered by truck, discovered that compressors have been the excessive failure level, comprising about 50% of all the points for these methods. Within the six months with one of the best information — mature refueling stations, mature upkeep and operations, highest demand with out being remotely close to capability — the stations have been out of service for repairs and upkeep 2,000 extra hours than the overall time spent pumping hydrogen into automobiles.

In hydrogen buses, California’s information for its bus fleets makes it clear that upkeep prices have been 50% larger than for its diesel buses, and prices on this desk are based mostly on that have.

Notice that European expertise per their annual hydrogen standing report makes it clear that they’ve been unable to recover from 20 months of guarantee and upkeep included in prices of the hydrogen buses, whereas they have been in a position to get 5 years of full elements and repair and 8-year drivetrain warranties for electrical buses. The numbers above may very well be adjusted based mostly on reaching a helpful guarantee and repair settlement in the price of the buses, however the bus capital price would go up.

This situation has an electrolyzer positioned on Mississauga transit services with the hydrogen buses. Based mostly on the experiences of California, London, Whistler, Barcelona, and Madrid, I’m assuming 80% bus reliability, and therefore 56,000 kilometers as a substitute of 70,000 because the annual driving distance per bus. The electrolyzers are assumed to be operating at evening underneath Ontario’s very low evening time charges, for a blended price per kWh of $0.04.

As a reminder, every kilogram of hydrogen requires 55 kWh of electrical energy. Hydrogen gas cell buses eat roughly 10 kilograms of hydrogen per 100 kilometers of driving per metrics I’ve at hand, so 56,000 kilometers requires about 5,600 kilograms of hydrogen. Every bus would have a requirement for roughly 300 MWh of electrical energy delivered to electrolyzers on the facility over the 12 months. That is roughly thrice the electrical energy necessities for an equal electrical bus, for distinction.

As hydrogen bus fleets aren’t dependable based mostly on international experiences for the reason that early 2000s, with no considerable enhancements skilled, diesel buses would wish to function of their stead once they have been out of service. Operational prices exclude driver labor, because it’s assumed to be required even when no pilot have been run.

As a observe on this, whereas operational modifications on account of electrical bus charging are modeled and expounded on consistently, the dearth of reliability of hydrogen buses and refueling stations isn’t modeled in estimates in my expertise, simply found — once more — throughout operation.

For these eventualities, CA$18 to $36.5 million are the vary of prices over the 5 years.

The following situation to think about is one by which the electrolyzer and electrical energy prices are eradicated. On this case, it’s seemingly that Air Merchandise could be contracted to offer grey hydrogen delivered from its Sarnia facility by tanker truck. US Division of Power and different information factors make it clear that delivered price of hydrogen for smaller scales, 450 kilograms a day or much less, are larger. For the 5-bus situation, the hydrogen necessities per day are roughly 60 kilograms, and for the 10-bus situation roughly 120 kilograms, nicely underneath the decrease clip stage.

“For tube-trailer gaseous stations, supply prices are projected to be $9.50/kg and $8/kg at 450 kg/day and 1,000 kg/day stations, respectively (2016$)”

Notice that’s solely supply price, and people are US {dollars}. For this situation, Mississauga ought to finances the upper finish of these scales for supply and add prices for manufacturing the hydrogen. Assuming CA$14 for supply and $2 for manufacturing, the price per kilogram could be roughly $16.

Notice that Canadian heavyweight Enbridge would like this resolution too. All of that hydrogen could be manufactured from pure gasoline Enbridge delivered to the Air Product Sarnia facility. The volumes aren’t nice for this, however Enbridge’s technique is similar as all different fossil gas producers and distributors, to exchange pure gasoline and oil with hydrogen manufactured from their product with vital governmental subsidies in a single case and easily delay electrification and shifting off of fossil fuels within the various. They win both means, however nobody else does.

It wouldn’t shock if Enbridge was lobbying for the Mississauga hydrogen bus pilot. In spite of everything, it was a part of the group of hydrogen-heavy companies which deeply skewed Ontario’s hydrogen technique into one which will probably be a failure studied in B-schools and coverage lessons for years.

Given the robust strategic benefits for each Enbridge and Air Merchandise, Mississauga needs to be cautious about any proposed delivered prices of hydrogen being artificially lowered to create dependency, and demand on being quoted full prices for the hydrogen.

Additional, as famous within the earlier article, international information on the precise price of producing inexperienced hydrogen makes it clear that projections of very cheap inexperienced hydrogen are baseless. Don’t base price circumstances on presumed low future prices of  hydrogen. It’s not getting cheaper.

Notice that whereas the overall price of the trial goes down, so do the advantages. Grey hydrogen would end in double the greenhouse gasoline emissions of inexperienced hydrogen with Ontario’s grid electrical energy carbon depth, and 6 occasions the emissions of battery-electric automobiles. (As a observe, gas cell buses manufacturing carbon debt is way more just like battery electrical and the fixed utilization amortizes manufacturing debt over extra kilometers, so the distinction shouldn’t be nice.)

The ultimate situation is, after all, battery-electric buses. Whereas that is altering fairly quickly, there may be nonetheless the idea of 10% extra electrical buses required to offer the identical service as diesel buses, and the situation respects that.

Capital expenditures are vastly decrease. Hydrogen electrolyzers and refueling stations are way more costly than high-speed charging methods for electrical buses, even with substantial battery buffering to scale back grid improve prices. Hydrogen electrolyzers would require thrice the vitality and energy in a single day to fabricate hydrogen on the facility, so the price of electrical methods upgrades wouldn’t be in inexperienced hydrogen’s favor, though it could be in delivered grey hydrogen’s favor.

Electrical buses are way more dependable than gas cell buses and extra dependable than diesel buses, as as soon as once more California’s bus fleet information reveals. Upkeep prices are decrease than diesel and downtime doesn’t need to be accounted for, particularly for small fleets with in a single day depot charging.

Electrical energy is a 3rd the price of manufacturing inexperienced hydrogen on website.

The prices for the hydrogen bus situation vs the battery-electric bus situation, per international information on precise experiences, not fantasmagorical illusions of filth low-cost hydrogen, make it clear that Mississauga may get twelve or 13 electrical buses, together with full methods parts, upkeep, and operational prices, for lower than the overall system price of 5 hydrogen buses.

I offered some suggestions for the federal government of Canada, town of Mississauga, and CUTRIC within the earlier article. Clearly I’m including reference class forecasting to the suggestions. If CUTRIC’s Rout∑.i™ 2.0 mannequin doesn’t end in prices that align with empirical actuality from hydrogen bus pilots around the globe, then it’s merely incorrect. As CUTRIC has been enabling Mississauga with its hydrogen bus pilot program, it clearly can’t be displaying these vital budgetary variances, in any other case Mississauga wouldn’t be contemplating hydrogen buses.

In spite of everything, why would a metropolis spend vastly extra for a much less dependable resolution if it truly was getting good recommendation and information from CUTRIC?