UK Hydrogen House Connected to Grid
Hydrogen power is usually associated with vehicles, but a house in the UK is showing that there are a multitude of uses for fuel cells. The grid-connected West Midlands home is powered by hydrogen as part of a £2 million University of Birmingham and Black County Housing Group (BCHG) project.
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The grid-connected house generates all its energy from a fuel-cell unit in a shed behind the house, which converts bog-standard natural gas into hydrogen. A 600 liter tank placed next to the fuel cell unit stores hot water, and excess electricity from the unit is sent to the grid.
The house’s fridge-sized fuel cell unit can generate 1.5kW of electricity and 3kW of heat—including hot water and space heating.
Apparently, the team behind the house believes that everyone will have hydrogen fuel cell units in their homes at some point in the future. But much more research needs to be done before fuel cells are energy and cost-efficient enough to be worth a switchover from natural gas.
Photo Credit: SmartPlanet
It will be interesting to see if scaling this technology is feasible. I don’t quite understand how you can source that much natural gas to provide power for everyone.
It’d would be great if this is readily available worldwide. But the only problem I can see is maintainance. Having a storage tank for Hydrogen can be pretty scary. Has anyone seen the experiment back in college where the professor would light a balloon filled with hydrogen? Now amplify that to a large tanker. It’s pretty scary to see that kind of exploding potential so close to home. So, containing hydrogen and making sure it won’t accidentally blow somehow are my main concerns.
Ariel,
Just two areas of clarification. First, I’m unclear about bog-standard natural gas? Do bogs create natural gas? Is the bog nearby?
What type of fuel cell is it? That sounds like a rather large one, so it’s not likely a PEM which requires pure hydrogen anyway. Is it solid oxide? If so, I think they also cogenerate heat.
Bog-standard is an english slang term meaning perfectly normal. So it just uses normal, natural gas. Nothing to do with bogs…
@ WTTW,
regarding the gas — it’s just natural gas. “Bog standard” is a Brit English way of saying “normal”, “pedestrian”.
Re the fuell cell type — I’ll have to check and come back to you on that.
Adam
@GGTD. The absolutely cool thing about this house is how modular its power aquisition is. Right now the main source of electricity is Gas/power line, but in the future, let’s say a different gas/liquid becomes the “Bog Standard”, all you need is a different converter in the shed, a much more simple architecture, than digging around the house to replace many more connectors/pipings/stoves to make the transition. If the future has hydrogen as the standard, well you wouldn’t need a converter anymore, would ya?
I have seen this used in a commercial environment. It is not a big jump to residential, it just takes a commitment. That’s the problem with all of the new technologies. Almost to many to choose from.