payoff time for fuel cell investment at two to three years,
depending on fleet size and characteristics.
Hydrogen supply hurdles
But there are roadblocks. Opponents cite the cost of the fuel
cell packs and the hydrogen itself, as well as the infrastructure
required for storage and dispensing. Then there is the expense
of building either an in-house hydrogen generation system or
having the gas trucked in by industrial vendors. Relying on
vendor shipping networks—the most common means today
of delivering hydrogen to distribution centers—carries its
own hefty price tag, especially if the gas quantities must support the needs of larger fleets and if the distance between the
vendor’s location and the distribution center is more than
100 miles.
Praxair Inc., one of the largest suppliers of hydrogen, does
not have a presence in the lift-truck market, mostly because
so few lift trucks use fuel cells. Yet Tom Harrison, hydrogen
product manager for Praxair, predicts strong future demand
for fuel cell technology, especially among the large manufacturers and retailers that run warehouses and DCs. “The market size right now doesn’t appear to be a stumbling block,”
Harrison says.
Ryan says the cost of transportation and distribution is the
main barrier to aggressive adoption of fuel cell technology. “If
we had hydrogen generation centers around every corner,
there would be a rush to the door for fuel cells, regardless of
the other issues,” he says.
Dickinson of AeroVironment says he “would question the
value of fuel cells even for heavy-duty users.” He says that the
fast-charge battery process is far more cost-effective than
using fuel cells, and that the charging can be completed on
workers’ lunch breaks or other off-duty periods so as not to
drive up labor costs and impact productivity.
The only scenario where battery charging makes less sense
than fuel cells, he says, is in distribution centers whose trucks
operate with virtually no downtime and don’t even have an
opportunity for battery recharging.
Charging ahead
Still, companies who see the long-term promise in fuel cells
are forging ahead. Billerica, Mass.-based Nuvera Fuel Cells
Inc., one of the nation’s few fuel cell manufacturers, has
developed an onsite outdoor hydrogen generator for customers that use more than 25 kilograms ( 55 pounds) a day.
The unit uses a steam-reformation process to generate hydrogen for $4 a kilogram ( 2. 2 pounds), which the company says
is the most cost-effective solution.
In October, lift-truck maker Crown Equipment Corp. of
New Bremen, Ohio, launched a project to upgrade 20 of its
trucks at the Pentagon’s Defense Distribution Depot in
Warner Robins, Ga., with fuel cell packs. The 20 trucks are
“counterbalanced,” meaning they have sufficient ballast to
offset the lighter weight of fuel cells relative to batteries,
thus avoiding the need to reduce the amount of weight the
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