Invention harnesses hydrogen energy

BPA alum: device makes green power from water and air

By Steve Law

Pamplin Media Group, Apr 9, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Anhydrous ammonia, a common fertilizer, is often shipped in rail cars, like this one off U.S. 30 south of the St. Johns bridge.

THOMAS PATTERSON / PAMPLIN MEDIA GROUP FILE PHOTO

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What do you get when you combine water, wind and air with the stockpicker’s maxim “buy low and sell high?”

By Jack Robertson’s reckoning, a viable formula to produce hydrogen energy and green fertilizer.

He calls it a hydrogen hub.

Scientists often speak of hydrogen as the clean, plentiful energy source of the future, but “it’s always been a Buck Rogers, 10-years-from-now concept,” says Robertson, 59, a Portland retiree. “We think we’ve come up with something here that finally cracks the hydrogen code.”

A hydrogen hub would be a power plant that uses water and air to produce a form of ammonia, then burns the ammonia to yield hydrogen energy.

Robertson says his invention would trim the need for gas- and coal-fired power plants that contribute to global warming. He envisions a new sustainable industry springing up at abandoned aluminum plants or the former Trojan nuclear plant in Rainier, Ore.

Robertson is no crackpot. The Stanford University grad worked a decade as an aide to Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield, then 16 years at Bonneville Power Administration, rising to BPA’s acting chief executive officer.

Robertson has a patent pending for his hydrogen hub concept, and is teaming with technical experts and utilities to move into the testing phase.

“There’s no rocket science here,” says John Holbrook, a Stanford buddy of Robertson’s and a retired project manager for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. Robertson’s invention, Holbrook says, is a novel way of putting existing technologies together. “All the pieces have been done before. You only need water, air and electricity to do it.”

Cheap power crucial

Robertson says it’s vital to understand the unique pickle — and opportunity— facing area utilities and the BPA, the federal agency in Portland that markets hydro power to Northwest utilities.

Every spring, melting snow sends torrents of water past a series of Columbia River Basin dams. The proliferation of wind turbines in the Columbia River Gorge adds to the electricity produced in the spring, when winds pick up.

The seasonal surge of hydro and wind power causes the spot price of electricity sold on the wholesale market to plummet. Last spring, Robertson says, some unidentified entities were stuck with surplus electricity and sold it at a loss, to avoid spilling water over the Columbia River dams and imperiling salmon.

“They were paying people to take power this last spring,” Robertson says, “or were selling it for zero for periods of time.”

As summer arrives, and people rely on air conditioning, demand for power rises as hydro and wind power production subside. The market price of electricity spikes.

“It’s feast or famine, because of the way the system is designed,” says Robertson.

How it works

A hydrogen hub would buy up cheap hydro and wind power for several weeks in the spring, say for 1 or 2 cents a kilowatt hour. PGE now sells green power to residential customers for 10 cents a kilowatt hour.

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