Sneak Peek into NHA C&S Activities for 2005

The National Hydrogen Association celebrated its fifteenth year as the internationally recognized premiere trade association promoting the use of hydrogen as an energy carrier and removing the barriers to the implementation of hydrogen systems. The NHA has a robust membership and continues to achieve its program goals. The National Hydrogen Association continues to make progress on the hydrogen safety, codes and standards priorities as identified by members, and enjoys significant leveraging from the Department of Energy in the form of two grants – one from DOE and one through the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). These grants allow the NHA to carry out our safety activities with cost-share from DOE.

In 2004, the NHA held two NHA Hydrogen Safety Codes & Standards Workshops, conducted a Hydrogen Workshop at the Fuel Cell Seminar, hosted a number of national and international meetings, published the Hydrogen Safety Report monthly, posted workshop proceedings online, and participated directly in key standards meetings.

For 2005, the NHA will continue to provide consensus forums for the broadest range of stakeholders in the developing hydrogen energy economy. We will continue to keep our Codes and Standards Workshops open to all interested parties, and expand our safety outreach efforts to state initiatives. We will continue to hold workshops and publish the Hydrogen Safety Report, subject to available funding.

Through workshops, technical sessions at our Annual Conference, presentations at key hydrogen conferences and codes and standards working group meetings, as well as keeping the hydrogen community informed of activities through the Hydrogen Safety Report, we will continue to provide opportunities for dialog between automotive manufacturers, fuel cell developers, hydrogen suppliers, component manufacturers, research organizations, standards development organizations, and other interested parties to ensure the broadest range of technical consensus possible.

The NHA will continue to provide technical expertise and keep members informed of activities impacting hydrogen safety, codes and standards. The NHA will work in five areas: Technical conferences for hydrogen codes and standards, Interdisciplinary Consensus Building, International Standards and Global Technical Regulations, Technical Support for State and Regional Hydrogen Programs, and US Model Code Support.

Committee Structure
The Chair of the C&S Committee plans to create a Steering Subcommittee of the Codes & Standards Committee. This allows all interested parties to remain on the Codes & Standards Committee, while providing a mechanism for a more manageable group of active participants to discuss issues and plan workshops on a more regular basis. The entire membership will be invited to indicate an interest in serving on this subcommittee. The Chairman will strive to ensure a diverse, but manageable group is created. Interested members of the NHA Board of Directors are especially encouraged to participate.

Technical Activities
Technical activities are those where the NHA provides technical expertise to key stakeholders, including codes and standards development organizations, national and international forums, authorities having jurisdiction, and others through participation in conferences, workshops, working group meetings, teleconferences, and e-mails. It also involves coordinating stakeholders to form technical consensus around technical issues. It includes the planning of workshops and short-courses, and the activities of our working groups.

Refocus Working Groups
The NHA periodically polls members to determine codes and standards priorities, and forms working groups for those items that are considered important and that a focused NHA effort could advance, based on available funding. The NHA has a number of working groups based on priorities of members as polled at the end of 2003. It has become clear in 2004 that some of these working groups may no longer be necessary. In some cases, a working group may not be the best forum to meet the goals of the activity. As many of these issues remain important to members, the NHA may restructure some activities to best meet our goals. In early 2005, the NHA will inform the membership on the status of these activities. In cases where the need for an NHA role exists, a refocused effort with clearly defined objectives will be established. Otherwise, with membership agreement, the activity will be cancelled or directed to a more suitable forum, such as a regular liaison with an activity now being performed by a Standard Development Organization, or the USFCC Codes and Standards activities.

Hydrogen Quality
In 2004 ISO TC 197 and SAE began efforts to create a technical specification for hydrogen fuel quality in order to limit impurities in hydrogen fuel for PEM fuel cells in road transport applications. Automobile manufacturers in conjunction with fuel cell developers initiated both efforts. By their nature, these efforts will lead to stringent impurity limits on hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles, which may not be necessary for other applications, including ICEs. As there are serious technical and economic ramifications to the developing hydrogen energy economy, the NHA has become involved to ensure technical consistency, develop a U.S. position on these issues, and most of all, to ensure that all key stakeholders have a voice in the development of these specifications. The NHA participates directly in these activities, and reports on the developing issues and decisions in the Hydrogen Safety Report. In addition, NHA staff contacts member companies directly when their sector is not adequately represented in the decisions taking place. There is specifically a need for more involvement from the hydrogen suppliers in these activities. The NHA will continue to participate in developing broad consensus on this key issue.

US Model Codes Support
The NHA will support the International Code Council in their efforts to review, develop and promulgate new codes for the use of hydrogen. This includes providing experts, technical reports, data and other information needed by the Code Officials to complete the development of these new codes.

The ICC Ad Hoc Committee for Hydrogen Gas has indicated that its role to initiate these code changes is nearing completion, and has asked the NHA to take on the role of coordinating industry to make future code change proposals and monitor the code development cycle to ensure future changes do not reverse the progress already made in this area.

In addition, the NHA would like to assist the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) in identifying changes to NFPA codes to facilitate the implementation of hydrogen energy technologies. NFPA has a Hydrogen Coordination Group to begin the process. The NHA would like to participate more closely with this group, and work with the hydrogen industry to develop proposals for the NFPA family of codes.

We would also like to provide technical support for training programs being developed by DOE for code officials. For example, we would like to prepare and review materials for DOE’s Hydrogen 101.

International Standards and Global Technical Regulations
NHA will continue to support ISO TC 197 plenary meetings and relevant working groups. NHA will continue to serve on the ISO TC 197 permanent editing committee, and participate in the US TAG for ISO TC 197. The NHA would like to expand on the work of supporting ISO TC 197 and IEC TC 105 activities. In particular, we would like to assist the DOE and NREL Hydrogen Codes & Standards Coordinating Committee (HC&SCC) in ensuring that an appointed US expert is able to participate in key international standards meetings.

As more hydrogen energy systems are being delivered, the NHA has received a growing number of requests to help educate planning authorities and code officials on hydrogen energy systems. In 2003, the NHA held one of our C&S Workshops in Michigan for this purpose. We built upon this concept in 2004 by co-locating a workshop with the CaFCP Road Rally. For 2005, we seek to expand our capability to respond favorably to industry requests to conduct hydrogen seminars or short-courses to educate planning officials, code officials, project developers, engineers, and others on hydrogen energy technologies. This is designed to facilitate planning and permitting approval for installations of hydrogen and fuel cell projects. If you have an interest in hosting a hydrogen safety education workshop in your region, please contact Karen Hall or Patrick Serfass.