KWR Pilot City – The transport of the future
Hydrogen filling station
What do we see here?
This hydrogen filling station is a first in the Netherlands. Anticipating the development of more facilities of this kind in our country, KWR has been filling up its company cars here since July 2019. A decision was made at that time to bring the vehicle fleet into line with the transport of the future: hydrogen-electric cars. A fill-up here still takes about an hour, while at public stations it’s no more than five minutes. With a full tank, the latest passenger car models can run for more than 600 kilometres.
What's this pilot for?
It is becoming increasingly clear that sustainable mobility and hydrogen-electric transport are one and the same thing. Besides passenger vehicles, this certainly applies to heavy transport, such as busses, lorries and shipping. Electric-powered vehicles carry a large battery on board.
But in the case of hydrogen-electric vehicles, the electric motor is powered by electricity generated by an inbuilt fuel cell. Hydrogen is an extremely clean energy carrier for vehicles. Its only emission is clean water. Another advantage of hydrogen is the small risk of overloading the power grid. Our next step after this filling station will be to use solar energy to produce green hydrogen on a demonstration scale. This energy will be supplied by the solar panels, which can be seen on the site of Watertransportmaatschappij Rijn-Kennemerland next door.
Who is behind this?
This filling station is the result of collaborative effort within a wide consortium consisting of Allied Waters, KWR, Pitpoint, Delft University of Technology, VolkerWessels and Waternet. The concept for the storage and use of sustainable energy, in which heat and hydrogen are the two energy-storage components, involved many years of work.
The Hysolar company was established for the production of green hydrogen; it is a partnership between Allied Waters and Jos Scholman Aannemersbedrijf. The development and realisation of the filling station were funded in part by the Water, Energy and Logistics Top Sectors.
