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The partners

• Province of Gelderland
• Municipality of Arnhem
• Arnhem-Nijmegen Urban Region
• HyGear B.V.
• NedStack
• E-Traction Europe
• VéBé van Steijn BV
• Connexxion
• HAN Automotive Expertise Centre

Province of Gelderland

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Municipality of Arnhem

Innovation and sustainability are the key points in the policy of the Municipality of Arnhem. Together with businesses and educational establishments such as the HAN University of Applied Sciences it is working towards better economics, cleaner mobility and sustainable energy provision. This offers benefits for the environment as well as for the economy. Pillars in the policy are the stimulation of innovative networks for the government, businesses, education and research (see www.kiemt.nl), good branch locations (such as Kleefsewaard/Koningspleij and Arnhems Buiten) and making innovations and sample projects visible in the town.
Arnhem has leading companies in the fields of energy and electricity. KEMA, TenneT, EnergieNed and Alliander have all grown big in the region. Among the new companies are NedStack with its fuel cells, HyGear with hydrogen reformers, and Nuon-Helianthos with flexible solar cell panel film. The energy and environment sector in Arnhem has grown by some 60% in recent years and provides nearly 9000 jobs, which puts it in the top 5 employers.
The HyMove project is one of the example projects for the innovation and environmental policy. The municipality is subsidising it by € 444,000 and has been involved since the initial preparations in 2007. It has helped bring the parties together and has made knowledge and the budget available in order to have the safety aspects and the licensing process worked out properly.

Arnhem-Nijmegen Urban Region

The Arnhem-Nijmegen Urban Region, incorporating twenty municipalities, is concerned with regional questions in the fields of mobility, living, working and spatial considerations. The urban region develops plans for better accessibility, good public transport and an attractive environment for housing, working and living, and implements the plans in collaboration with the authorities, knowledge establishments and businesses.
The Arnhem-Nijmegen Urban Region is working on the Eureka programme for improving air quality. The problems of energy and climate also play a part in this. Eureka is intended to make the urban region independent of the current fossil sources of energy.
A central theme in the programme is traffic, which is responsible for a large proportion of the air problem. The solution lies in a changeover to clean and more sustainable fuels such as hydrogen. The urban region considers the HyMove project to be part of investigating clean and climate-neutral forms of transport. The urban region is contributing more than 600,000 euros to the test project.

HyGear B.V.

HyGear specialises in the design and production of equipment and small production units for advanced chemical processes as part of small-scale integrated solutions with high energy yield and high efficiency. Examples include test plants for testing new processes such as GTL, or the small-scale production of ethanol. Small-scale production units for gas conversion, gas purification and on-site gas enrichment are also built. One of these products is an on-site hydrogen production system.
HyGear is responsible in the HyMove project for the design, production and installation of the infrastructure for fuelling with hydrogen. The basis of the infrastructure is the HyGear 5 Nm3/h on-site hydrogen reformer. A state-of-the-art hydrogen filling station, together with a hydrogen compressor, storage tanks and a filling port is being built in Arnhem. As well as building the filling station, HyGear is responsible for the necessary licences.

NedStack

NedStack had the idea of a hydrogen bus in Arnhem as a member of the Arnhem Hydrogen Network and was able to make politicians enthusiastic. NedStack fuel cell technology is involved in the project as producer of the fuel cell stacks and the fuel cell systems. Since it was founded in 1999, NedStack has been working hard on the further development of the polymer electrolyte fuel cell. This has been used in demonstration projects that include the Nemo H2 tour boat in Amsterdam, a power plant in Delfzijl, the HyTruck and now the HyMove bus. As well as supplying fuel cells for demonstration projects, NedStack has been providing them for back-up power supplies at telecom companies for several years. It has delivered some 200 systems in this initial commercial market for fuel cells, which is doubling every year. Comparable growth in the applications for buses is expected from 2013.

E-Traction Europe

E-Traction in Apeldoorn specialises in electric drives for various types of electric vehicles and vessels. It has developed The Wheel, an entirely electric drive that is integrated into the wheel itself. This type of drive makes every sort of mechanical transmission (by means of gearboxes) redundant. E-Traction is currently developing various models of The Wheel for reducing the fuel consumption of buses, SUVs, monorails and passenger cars. As well as developing wheel motors, the company also develops and produces systems for electric or hybrid vehicles, such as batteries, chargers, converters and auxiliary systems.
E-Traction supplied the drive for the HyMove bus and integrated all the systems. With that project it wants to prove that, because of their high efficiency, wheel motors can make a major contribution to the implementation and acceptance of technology such as fuel cells. Thanks to the wheel motors it is possible to use smaller stacks and thereby reduce costs.

VéBé van Steijn BV

VéBé van Steijn was founded in 1919 and is currently involved in filling stations, bakery products and supplying industrial gases and propane. For many years VéBé supplied coal and oil and so built an affinity with the energy sector. The company has been involved with the hydrogen project in Arnhem since the beginning. The idea of building a public hydrogen filling station in Arnhem came about from its contacts within the Arnhem Hydrogen Network. Thanks to this new type of energy for passenger cars, buses and in the longer term perhaps trucks as well, VéBé is able to position itself as a leader in the quite traditional fuel market.
Other parties joined it in the initial phase, and so a Gelderland project came about with a bus, a number of cars and a filling station. The hydrogen fuelling point was built at the existing filling station on the Van Oldebarneveldlaan. A completely new and futuristic filling station will be built in the Koningspleij industrial park, where companies that are active in the energy and environmental sector are to be found.

Connexxion

Connexxion provides urban and regional transport (by bus, taxi, tram and train), private hire (taxi services, ambulances, tours) and boat transport. It carries out its services in commissions from public and private clients. At the end of 2008 Connexxion was operating contracts for one or more years from some 225 commissioning parties in private hire (taxi and touring) transport, sixteen in public transport and eight in transport by water.
Innovation is one of the most important key points at Connexxion. The possibilities of technological renewal are continually being investigated. Pilot schemes with alternative fuels are high on the list at Connexxion. It has already gained experience with vehicles running on natural gas, among others in the Haarlem IJmond franchise, and at the beginning of the Arnhem Nijmegen Urban Region franchise in December 2009 it invested in 75 new natural gas buses, which are now in service in and around Nijmegen.
Connexxion is happy to share its knowledge and experience of alternative fuels with HyMove. There is also much interest in testing running on hydrogen in practice, something that fits in with Connexxion’s innovative nature. If the pilot scheme is successful, Connexxion will use the hydrogen bus in the regular timetable in the Arnhem Nijmegen franchise.

HAN Automotive Expertise Centre

The HAN University of Applied Sciences is one of the most well-regarded large colleges in the Netherlands. It provides more than 85 bachelor’s and master’s degree programmes for 28,000 students at its campuses in Arnhem and Nijmegen. The HAN offers modern and high-quality education. There is an extensive range of courses and a wide variety of types of education (full-time, part-time, dual or individual via the Internet). The HAN conducts applied research through professorships. It also provides advice, refresher courses, training courses and further education to businesses, institutes and organisations.
HAN automotive is involved in the HyMove-project because one of its key points is the mobile application of hydrogen and because it wishes to make an intrinsic contribution to technology projects that are working on mobility for the future. The HAN will contribute to monitoring the performance of the urban buses and will play a crucial role in designing and realising a fuel cell car. Furthermore, the HAN is involved in developing the control technology for these vehicles.