Hydrogen fueling station nears debut

After months of preparation and construction, La Cañada’s first hydrogen fueling station is nearly ready for its debut at the ARCO gas station on Foothill Boulevard at Woodleigh Lane, and the enthusiasm among those who’ve been building it is palpable.

“What’s going on is really important; there have been a lot of people working on this for the past 10 to 15 years,” said Joel Ewanick, chief executive and co-founder of FirstElement Fuel, an Irvine-based station developer working with a $27.6-million California Energy Commission grant and backing from automakers Toyota and Honda to install 19 fuel-cell stations statewide.

Ewanick and his colleagues are hopeful the La Cañada station could be fueling hydrogen cell vehicles as soon as Christmas. It will be one of seven Southern California installations to open in 2015.

Another 12 are expected to be installed in the state during the first quarter of 2016, according to FirstElement chief development officer and co-founder Shane Stephens.

“Nobody has done this at this speed or on this scale before,” he said, explaining how the company must go through a city’s planning department’s permitting process and get an inspection sign-off from the county’s building and safety division. “But I think cities are excited for this, and the public’s excited for this, so that’s helped us.”

Stephens said the Foothill Boulevard station had to undergo a commissioning process to ensure all machinery was functioning properly, as well as go through confirmation tests, during which vehicles are brought in for fueling in rapid succession.

A complete fill up should take about three to four minutes, with a kilogram of hydrogen costing roughly what gasoline did before the recent decline in prices. The La Cañada station is a landscaped structure with a canopy purposely designed not to resemble a traditional gas pump, Ewanick said.

“It’s actually a dispenser,” he qualified. “‘Pump’ is a gasoline term, because they have to pump gas out of the ground, but we’re actually releasing hydrogen into the car. We’re rewriting all these terms — in a way, it’s kind of fun.”

The station opening comes as Toyota continues to roll out its new Mirai, a hydrogen-based vehicle that emits only water. The automaker has identified certain markets where dealers may sell the new cars.

Although local dealerships, like La Crescenta’s Bob Smith Toyota, do not plan to offer the Mirai for sale in the coming months, fuel station designers are confident the trend will grow as the infrastructure is built.

“It really is the future,” Ewanick said. “These stations are going to change the world. We’re definitely pioneers — or adventurers.”

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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine