NorthCAT

SERC is the home of the new North State Regional Office of the Northern California Center for Alternative Transportation Fuels and Advanced Vehicles (NorthCAT).  The formation of NorthCAT was made possible by a grant from the California Energy Commission. The UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies is the project lead and, along with SERC, has joined with numerous other project partners to offer education, training, demonstration, and project deployment services to the Northern California region, which stretches from the San Francisco Bay Area north to the Oregon Border. One of SERC’s key roles is to serve the rural North State region.

SERC has just completed an office space expansion to house the NorthCAT office. A space designed as a hydrogen generation and storage room but used for general storage has been converted into a five-person workspace. All that remains is to add a sign on the door reading “NorthCAT North State Regional Office.” This new space will help us provide alternative fuel vehicle services to the region, and in conjunction with our larger facility, including our hydrogen fueling station, will allow us to host trainings, workshops, and demonstrations. We also have plans to add an electric vehicle charging station in our driveway, with interpretive signage to be funded by the CEC grant.

In other NorthCAT news, SERC has participated in the development of a NorthCAT Center Development Plan and SERC staff will attend a NorthCAT strategic planning meeting at UC Berkeley in August. Plans are also in the works to hold NorthCAT stakeholder outreach meetings in the North State region later this year to solicit input and spread the word about the new Center. Finally, a NorthCAT web page is under development and should go live by the end of this month.