(Credit: NREL)GKN Hydrogen and Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) today announced the companies will work with the US Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) on an innovative green hydrogen storage solution. GKN Hydrogen's HY2MEGA can enable safe, long duration clean energy storage without the need for compression. At scale, this combined technology could provide resilient power in case of widespread outages. It also highlights the technologies needed to reach carbon neutrality and accelerate clean fuel initiatives.
Two HY2MEGA hydrogen storage subsystems will connect to an electrolyzer and fuel cell at the ARIES facility on NREL's Flatirons Campus near Boulder, Colorado. The electrolyzer will use renewable sources and produce green hydrogen to be stored in the HY2MEGA. The HY2MEGA stores the hydrogen in a solid state (metal hydrides), under low pressure in a compact footprint. According to GKN Hydrogen, it’s one of the safest ways to store hydrogen. The fuel cell will then convert the green hydrogen to produce renewable electricity. The two HY2MEGA's will add an additional 500 kgs of hydrogen storage on site. The three-year project is set to launch at the end of this year.
SoCalGas will leverage the large-scale hydrogen storage capabilities of GKN Hydrogen's HY2MEGA from this project to help accelerate the commercialization and deployment of green hydrogen projects. SoCalGas said, ultimately, green hydrogen generation and storage will help decarbonize the energy system while assuring stability of the electrical grid to enable even higher penetrations of renewable sources of electricity.
According to NREL, this project will demonstrate the benefits of a new technology that efficiently stores energy produced from renewable electricity. And according to GKN Hydrogen, this project will demonstrate that large scale green hydrogen storage with HY2MEGA can be used to help decarbonize and accelerate the shift to cleaner fuels.
