Honda opens solar hydrogen station in Japan's Saitama Prefecture

[TheOtherDave™]

Filed under: Emerging Technologies, Green Culture, Hydrogen, Solar, Honda, Japan


For those of you who struggled with high school chemistry, this one's a doozy.

Honda has opened up a hydrogen station in Saitama, Japan that converts sunlight into hydrogen that may be used to power fuel-cell electric vehicles such as the Honda FCX Clarity.

The station, which uses both juice from the grid and solar power, can produce 1.5 kilograms of hydrogen in 24 hours. That's enough to power an FCX Clarity for about 90 miles. In addition, Honda also added an electrical outlet to the FCX Clarity so that the car can function as a power source.

For those keeping notes, the station turns sunlight into hydrogen by way of a high-pressure water electrolysis system that was developed by the Japanese automaker. The installation is the latest step in a green-transportation partnership that Honda started with the prefecture in 2009. Saitama is about 20 miles northwest of Tokyo.

Honda became the first automaker to make a hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicle available to the public when it started selling the FCX Clarity in Japan in late 2007. The vehicle is also in operation in California, and you can go here to read Autoblog's First Drive review.Continue reading Honda opens solar hydrogen station in Japan's Saitama Prefecture
Honda opens solar hydrogen station in Japan's Saitama Prefecture originally appeared on AutoblogGreen on Sun, 08 Apr 2012 08:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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