Decentralised energy and the hydrogen economy

Hydrogen fuel cells have a major role to play in carving out new, decentralised energy systems argues Henri Winand as he describes how India is leading the way in exploiting this technology.

What does a telecoms deal in India have to do with Toyota’s latest car or the development of alternatives to smartphone batteries? What if we were able to cut the cord between electronics devices and the plug socket permanently or achieve the electrification of cars, with a solution that performs very much like our present day vehicles, in terms of range and refuelling but is high efficiency and zero emissions?

These are all aspects of the rapidly developing hydrogen society.

For so long overlooked, hydrogen appears increasingly the answer to some of the renewable sector’s woes. Hydrogen can be produced cleanly, through solar and wind power-to-gas methods, and it presents one of the most effective ways of storing renewable energy at scale. In an age where we are still grappling with the issues of intermittency of renewables, hydrogen is primed to be a key solution for the renewable energy sector.

Major headway has been achieved recently, with respect to the integration of hydrogen into the energy landscape. British fuel cell technology company Intelligent Energy recently announced a £1.2 billion deal to provide clean energy to telecom towers in India. It is a watershed moment for fuel cell technology and, indeed, for distributed power and generation. India’s telecom infrastructure is blighted by electrical grid outages that total in excess of 8 hours a day. To keep the towers running, tower operators burn through billions of litres of diesel for backup generators every year.In a country where 35 per cent of children suffer breathing difficulties related to air quality, this only serves to exacerbate what is a public health crisis.

Over the life of Intelligent Energy’s contract to supply power to the 27,400 telecom towers under its management, the intention is that when the diesel generators are retired, they will be replaced by fuel cells – potentially bringing more fully-operational fuel cells into the world than have ever previously existed.

The technology used to power the towers silently and cleanly is the same as that used to power vehicles and consumer electronics. The mass scale of the deal in India will drive economies of scale across every sector for fuel cells. At Intelligent Energy, we believe that price parity with diesel engines is very realistic and the desire of consumers for better battery life for their smartphones and tablets will make embedded fuel cells excellent value for money.

The interconnectivity of the sectors and the volumes which can help to drive down costs across them could also give consumers the option of moving away from the grid. Although the grid is stable in the UK, margins on grid capacity remain stubbornly thin while demand continues to outstrip supply. Data transmission from internet traffic, for instance, could according to some, consume all of Britain’s energy supply by 2035 and the meteoric rise of consumer electronics devices with poor battery life have made us figurative slaves to the grid.

It may seem unlikely that the UK can learn from India’s electrical grid, but necessity is the mother of invention and India may well be helping to invent a whole new way of thinking about power. Decentralisation makes networks more stable and big reductions in demand could pave the way for much greater freedom from the confines of the grid.

At a time when British fuel cell technology is penetrating the Indian market without subsidies, where they are moving away from diesel engines, the move towards implementing diesel generators to deal with grid capacity in the UK is really disappointing.

We are showing that British fuel cells are commercially viable in India so shouldn’t we be moving in the same direction? If it can work in India, there is no reason that it cannot work here.

We must do much more to develop dynamic and flexible means of storing energy and hydrogen offers the opportunity to do just that. Once we have cracked the problem of storage, we can then really start to solve our capacity problems.

In developing markets where grid reliability is poor, the opportunities are obvious but Intelligent Energy’s vision is also matched by developed countries. Japan is pushing hard, for example, to make itself the hydrogen society and its car manufacturers are leading the way.

The flagship Toyota Mirai recently arrived in the UK and Tokyo Motor Show, held last month, provided the perfect backdrop for a number of car makers, including Honda and Lexus, to launch their hydrogen fuel cell concept cars.  This is at a time when Intelligent Energy already serves two Japanese and one other Asian car manufacturers. Given the pressure that electrification of vehicles would exert on the grid, the shortcomings of electrical charging and the recent ‘dieselgate’ scandal – fuel cell vehicles are looking increasingly like the most viable solution to policymakers’ conundrums.

The major challenge, so say hydrogen’s naysayers, is the infrastructure needed to support applications ranging from laptops to motorbikes. But the beauty is that hydrogen as a fuel can be generated at point of sale and, perhaps, in the future at home.

The UK’s first zero-emissions hydrogen fuelling station opened in Rotherham in September this year, creating hydrogen with electricity generated by a wind turbine to split water into its constituent parts.

And in July, a coalition of companies including Siemens, Linde and the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences inaugurated Energiepark Mainz, an energy park that will produce hydrogen using electricity from neighbouring wind parks. A consortium in Germany in October will bring the total number of hydrogen filling stations across the country to around 400 by 2023 – a huge boost to the number of purchase points for hydrogen globally and a clear signal of Germany’s intention to go green.

A world in which we all create our own clean hydrogen supply and use it to power everything in our lives may not be weeks away, but it is certainly no pipe dream either.

Blending hydrogen into the existing natural gas pipeline network, up to around 15% in concentration, is now thought to be an ideal means to store energy from renewable sources in large quantities by using hydrogen in existing natural gas infrastructures. It can be extracted downstream or burned with natural gas, increasing its efficiency because it burns at a higher temperature.

Otherwise, trucking and shipping by hydrogen-powered vehicles and ships offers a cleaner type of virtual pipeline than we see in practice for fossil fuels today.

The fuel cell industry is determined to seize the moment and the conditions that will allow it to flourish are slowly but surely falling into place. Japan and India have put themselves at the epicentre of a global clean power revolution by embracing the hydrogen economy, and where they lead, others are bound to follow.