Amid hydrogen outage in SF Bay Area, a hydrogen station in Oslo explodes

Following an explosion at the Air Products hydrogen processing facility in Santa Clara, hydrogen refueling stations across the SF Bay Area continue to be shut down. The explosion badly damaged, or destroyed, hydrogen production equipment and transportation trucks which served to carry hydrogen to refueling stations. Hydrogen refueling stations in the SF Bay Area have since shut down due to a lack of fuel. But, as I was writing this report news broke of another hydrogen refueling explosion, in Oslo Norway. In this case a public hydrogen refueling station exploded, and burned for a couple hours.

To remind – on June 1, 2019, the Air Products facility in Santa Clara exploded. Going by news reports several hydrogen transportation trucks were heavily damaged, and possibly some equipment at the site was damaged or destroyed.

The image leading this article shows the status of one of the SF Bay Area’s hydrogen refueling stations. That was captured on June 10, or 9 days after the explosion at the facility. Several other SF Bay Area hydrogen refueling stations show the same status. And, I’ve heard a rumor that some hydrogen stations in Southern California are also shut down as True Zero scrambles to get some hydrogen to stations in the SF Bay Area. Indeed the California Fuel Cell Partnership map does show closed stations in both the SF Bay Area and Southern California.

Here’s some detailed pictures I found on Twitter.

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About David Herron

David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.