Greenland Project to Store Renewables With Hydrogen
Filed Under: Environmental News on August 12, 2009
Greenland has announced the launch of the H2KT Project by the national energy company Nukissiorfiit. It will begin with a demonstration hydrogen fuel cell plant to be located in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital. The hydrogen will be used to store the huge green energy capacity of Greeland’s hydro plants. The plant will be operational by the end of this year.
About half of Nukissiorfiit’s power is currently hydro-based with the rest made by burning imported diesel fuel. Most of the country’s smaller towns and villages are dependent on that diesel fuel for their energy as they have no capacity for larger-scale renewable power production.
Cities that currently receive hydro power use diesel reserves as well. Greenland has a theoretical hydro power capacity of 70% of all of Europe, but seasonal fluctuations in both energy consumption and production make distribution impossible currently.
That’s about to change, though.
This initial H2KT Project will be testing the potential of using hydrogen as a storage medium for the excess power that can be produced in Greenland. It will make hydrogen through electrolytic production and then store it. When energy consumption is up, the hydrogen will be put through a fuel cell to produce excess power to compensate. The resulting water will be returned to the electrolytic chambers to be made back into hydrogen. The heat from the conversion process will also be captured to turn turbines for augmented power production.
Of course, there is loss between the hydrogen power (electricity) created and the process to storage and re-creation of electricity. This is obviously not a perpetual motion machine, but it is a huge step forward in technology and this and other projects, such as the one in New Mexico, could be the next step forward in making sustainable energy production and use a reality.
This plant specifically will be located at the Nukissiorfiit company headquarters in Nuuk and will be pretty small-scale in comparison to others. It will hopefully power the entire headquarters complex full time, however, and act as the testing springboard for a larger, more capable facility in the near future.
Related posts:
- Hydrogen Plant Being Built in New Mexico
- Islands of Tonga Producing Hydrogen From Deep Water Windmills
- Hydrogen Cars Tangled in Red Tape
