Large-scale green hydrogen system to be trialled in Orkney

A state-of-the-art commercial-scale green hydrogen storage system is set to bring greater energy security and reliability to the electrical grid to Orkney, it has been claimed.

During the system’s lifetime, H2GO’s smart hydrogen storage system, could remove over 225,000 gallons of diesel over its 30-year lifetime from the use by residents for home heat and power and the resulting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

It could displace up to 7,500 gallons of diesel and 90 tonnes of CO2 annually.

Funding to the tune of £4.3million for the groundbreaking energy management system has been secured from the UK Government’s department of business energy and industrial strategy’s (BEIS) £1billion net zero innovation portfolio, which aims to support innovation in the supply of hydrogen.

The project consortium members are varied but include Stromness-based European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC).

H2GO’s autonomous system, integrated with artificial intelligence (AI), stores and dispenses hydrogen in solid-state materials offering potential savings of up to 55 percent compared to compressing and storing hydrogen at high pressures.

“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.

This funding will assist in boosting hydrogen’s development as “the clean, affordable, homegrown superfuel of the future,” said Mr Hands.

The project aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of using green hydrogen for utility-scale storage on the island and showcase commercial use cases such as hydrogen refuelling stations, industrial heat, and power and hydrogen blending into gas networks.

H2GO Power also envisions technology suitability for long-duration energy storage for power and grid stability applications as those markets develop in the medium-term.

The project expects to generate 100 additional jobs by 2026 through H2GO Power and 50 more jobs across the other partners.

“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 Dr. Enass Abo-Hamed, CEO of H2GO Power.

“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.”