H2GO Power lands £4.3M for scalable green hydrogen storage system

H2GO Power lands £4.3M for scalable green hydrogen storage system

May 26, 2022 2 By Julie Campbell

The funding is for a 1 MWh scalable system to help Scotland’s Orkney Islands abandon fossil fuel.

H2GO Power is moving ahead with new commercial-scale state-of-the-art green hydrogen storage technology to help boost the Orkney Islands in Scotland’s electrical grid energy security and reliability.

Across the system’s 30-year lifespan, it is expected to eliminate the need for 225,000 gallons of diesel.

The H2GO smart green hydrogen storage system is expected to be able to remove the need for more than 225,000 gallons of diesel throughout the 30 years that it will be in operation. That will help to decarbonize local home heating for residents of the Orkney Islands, as well as the power flowing through its electrical grid.

Green hydrogen storage - Orkney Islands

This system isn’t just a hydrogen tank. Instead, it is a full system that has been integrated with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. It stores and dispenses H2 within solid-state materials. The predicted savings is as high as 55 percent when compared to relying on compressing H2 and storing it under high pressures. The H2GO solution has the potential to reach a targeted levelized cost of H2 conversion and storage at $0.25 per kilogram by the close of 2028.

The SHyLO green hydrogen storage project has received funding from the BEIS.

The SHyLO (Solid Hydrogen at Low Pressures) project receives £4.3 million in funding from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategies (BEIS) by way of the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio Low Carbon Hydrogen Supply 2 Competition. The project is run by a consortium under H2GO Power’s lead and that includes a number of partners such as ARC, HSSMI, The European Marine Energy Centre LTD (EMEC), Autodesk, and Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC).

The UK has been making important steps to adopt H2, including advancement of green hydrogen storage.

“The UK is truly leading the world in hydrogen innovation thanks to the exciting efforts of companies like H2GO Power,” said Energy Minister Greg Hands. “The government support which they have received today will help to boost the development of hydrogen as the clean, affordable, homegrown superfuel of the future.”

The goal of this particular project is to demonstrate how effective green hydrogen storage can be at a utility scale on Orkney Island. This will then help to place commercial usage cases into the spotlight, such as in the form of industrial heating, H2 refueling stations, electrical power, and H2 blending into gas networks.

H2GO Power also intends to develop technology that will enable green hydrogen storage over longer durations to help enhance power and grid security and stability throughout the mid-term development of those markets. The consortium expects that 100 new renewable energy jobs will be created through the project by 2026 at H2GO Power alone. An additional 50 jobs will be created across the other consortium members. Furthermore, an estimated 211 indirect jobs will also be created throughout the supply chain. This is expected to boost the SHyLO demonstration project’s financial impact while giving the local economy a shot in the arm.

Placing green hydrogen storage and usage potential into the local, national and international spotlight.

“This deployment showcases how utilising low-pressure, green hydrogen generated by wind and tidal energy can deliver higher efficiency and lower costs at scale while allowing island residents to depend more on cleaner grid power than their diesel generators,” said H2GO Power CEO Dr. Enass Abo-Hamed.

“This project has the potential to power up to 70 homes and lower the levelised cost of hydrogen to make the energy competitive with natural gas. Both short-term with the global energy crisis and long-term in the face of climate change, moving away from fossil fuels is in everyone’s priority. At scale, it’s technologies like ours that tick all the boxes of government decarbonisation targets, from economics to security and reliability,” added Abo-Hamed.

The Orkney Islands were chosen as the location for this project as they have the highest small and micro wind turbine concentration in the United Kingdom. This took into consideration turbines that are owned by larger communities as well as commercial turbines and those on farms.

Furthermore, the islands are not connected to the main utility grid in the United Kingdom, making them an ideal testing ground for H2GO’s technology. The wind energy will be used to power the electrolysis process to produce renewable H2 on site, which will then be stored within the H2GO proprietary technology.

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