The Hydrogen Education Foundation announced Designing a Hydrogen Community, the theme for the 5th annual Hydrogen Student Design Contest.

The Hydrogen Student Design Contest challenges multi-disciplinary teams of university-level students from around the world to develop and design hydrogen applications for real-world use. The Contest showcases the talents of students in many disciplines, including engineering, architecture, marketing, and entrepreneurship.

This year, teams of undergraduate and graduate students will be challenged to plan and design the basic elements of a hydrogen community in Southern California. Those basic elements address key aspects of the community: production and use of hydrogen.  Specifically, the students will identify ways to produce hydrogen renewably using local resources, early customers for that hydrogen (ahead of hydrogen vehicles) and then a repeatable design for local hydrogen fueling stations to accommodate new hydrogen cars and buses.

The Grand Prize winning team will be invited to present their design to experts in a keynote session of the NHA Hydrogen Conference and Expo in Long Beach, CA from May 3-6, 2010. Honorable Mention prize winners are also invited to present their designs in the poster presentations component of the conference. Cash prizes and awards are presented to the winning teams.

Interested teams can register starting today until January 22, 2010.  There is no fee for participating and all college and university students worldwide are invited to compete. Specific rules and guidelines will be available on the contest’s website in the coming days. For more information, visit www.HydrogenContest.org.