ORLEN has launched its second public hydrogen refueling station in Poland, located in Katowice. The fuel for the station in the Silesian region is supplied from the hydrogen hub in Włocławek, which was opened earlier this year. ORLEN Group now operates four public hydrogen refueling stations: two in Poland (in Poznań and Katowice), and two in the Czech Republic (in Prague and Litvínov).
The hydrogen station in Katowice is located at the traditional ORLEN station on Murckowska Street 22, on the route leaving the city towards the A4 motorway. The facility operates 24/7 and is open to the public, meaning it is available to all users of hydrogen-powered vehicles.
The station is equipped with two dispensers: one with a pressure of 350 bar for refueling buses and trucks, and another with a pressure of 700 bar for refueling passenger cars. The system’s capacity is at least 630 kg of hydrogen per day, which allows refueling of up to 20 buses and 5 passenger vehicles per day.
The Katowice facility is part of the Clean Cities – Hydrogen Mobility in Poland project, co-financed by the European Union through the CEF Blending Facility and by the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management (NFOŚiGW) under the program “Support for Infrastructure for Charging Electric Vehicles and Hydrogen Refueling Stations.”
In June this year, ORLEN opened its first public hydrogen station in Poznań. In addition to passenger vehicles, this station also serves a fleet of 25 buses operated by the Municipal Transport Company in Poznań. The previous year, the company launched a pilot hydrogen station at the Wola Duchacka bus depot in Kraków, where city buses are also refueled.
Additional hydrogen stations in Bielsko-Biała, Gorzów Wielkopolski, Wałbrzych, Kraków, Włocławek, Gdynia, Piła, and Warsaw will be commissioned in the coming years. These facilities are part of the second phase of the Clean Cities – Hydrogen Mobility in Poland project. The third phase plans the construction of 16 more stations. In April this year, ORLEN received a record non-repayable EU grant of €62 million for this purpose.
By 2030, ORLEN Group plans to build a network of over 100 hydrogen refueling stations for individual, public, and freight transport, both road and rail, in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Hydrogen will be supplied to these stations through the construction of a European network of hydrogen hubs powered by renewable energy sources and innovative installations converting municipal waste into zero- and low-emission hydrogen.
In August of this year, the ORLEN-led HySPARK international project, in consortium with 17 partners, became the first project in Poland to receive funding from the EU’s Clean Hydrogen Partnership program. Nearly €9 million will be used to produce hydrogen-powered vehicles and test them for use at Chopin Airport and in the Warsaw public transport system.
Source: managerplus.pl
