Toyota powering its US headquarters with Hydrogen Fuel Cell

With Toyota heading for its first series production hydrogen fuel cell car, they’ve installed an innovative fuel cell power system in their US headquarters.

It’s been a pipe dream for a long time; harness the planet’s plentiful supplies of hydrogen to produce power.

That’s getting a lot closer with a number of hydrogen fuel cell cars coming to the real car market in the next few years, and no doubt as part of their mission to convince the world that hydrogen is the future, Toyota are demonstrating the potential by using a hydrogen fuel cell to produce power at their US HQ.

Toyota has installed a 1.1 megawatt stationary fuel cell at its Los Angeles HQ which is capable of producing half its power needs during the heavy-load summer period.

Using a Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) – the same technology used in hydrogen fuel cell cars – enables Toyota to access the power generation on an as-needed basis due to its responsiveness; most other fuel cell powere supplies have to run continuously to provide baseload power.

The hydrogen fuel cell is able to provide the equivalent of the power needed to power 765 average US homes, generates twice the power of the solar array Toyota already has on the site and will reduce CO2 emissions by 1,500 tonnes during peak summer operating hours.

It’s a look at the potential future of power not just for cars, but for industry and homes too.

And it gets hydrogen power a higher profile – which won’t harm the quest to get us to take hydrogen fuel cell cars seriously one bit.