Barcelona is to have Spain’s first public-use hydrogen station
Launched by TMB and built and harnessed by Iberdrola, the facility will be located in the Zona Franca’s industrial estate and provide green energy to buses and other vehicles over the next ten years. It will go into service in 2021. The Zona Franca’s hydrogen station will be the first public facility of its kind in the Spanish State.
The Barcelona Metropolitan Transport Authority (TMB) has selected Iberdrola’s offer to supply renewable-source hydrogen to its fleet of urban buses, through a plant that will able to serve other fleets of electric vehicles in the Barcelona area and thereby advance towards a new mobility with zero pollutant emissions.
The plant will be built next year, in 2021, on a 5,000 square-metre plot of land belonging to the Zona Franca’s industrial estate, leased to the Zona Franca Consortium. It will be used by TMB buses equipped with this technology and, potentially, by other fleets as well as by the estate’s industries in general which adopt hydrogen as an alternative energy solution. According to the results of the competition, TMB is to pay 14.3 million euros for the hydrogen supply during the ten-year contract.
The Zona Franca’s hydrogen station will be the first public facility of its kind in the Spanish State. Under the awarded contract, which still has to be formally signed, it will supply renewable-source hydrogen produced by electrolysis. This therefore represents the start to a green hydrogen hub that will be built in one of the main industrial areas in Catalonia and Spain.
Eight vehicles in production
At the same time, TMB has acquired eight latest-generation hydrogen-cell buses, which will be arriving in Barcelona in November 2021 and are expected to go into service by the start of 2022.
The vehicles will be allocated to the Zona Franca’s Business Operations Centre and provided with vehicle hydrogen from the industrial estate’s refuelling plant, with an estimated consumption of 160 kilos a day. Consumption will increase over the following years as buses using this technology join the fleet, with as many as 60 in the pipeline.
The TMB’s adoption of hydrogen is backed by the European JIVE 2 programme promoting fuel-cell and zero-emission vehicles, co-funded by the European Union. The project is being launched in collaboration with the Barcelona Metropolitan Transport Authority (ATM).
The commitment to hydrogen is part of the TMB’s strategic option for green energies. This February saw the award of the contract for supplying 23 articulated electric buses containing batteries prepared for fast recharging on the street, thereby paving the way for turning the H16, H12 and V15 bus lines into zero-emission lines.
SOURCE: TMB
