Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) and GKN Hydrogen have announced a research demonstration project in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). This project focuses on a clean renewable hydrogen storage solution using GKN Hydrogen’s technology at NREL’s Flatirons Campus in Arvada.
The demonstration will store hydrogen in a solid state using metal hydrides rather than traditional gaseous storage tanks. This approach aims to evaluate the technology’s performance and integration with clean energy systems, such as microgrids or fuel cells, while identifying beneficial uses of solid-state storage for clean renewable hydrogen.
In a statement, Jawaad Malik, chief strategy and sustainability officer at SoCalGas, said, “This demonstration project highlights how surplus renewable energy can be used to create and store clean renewable hydrogen to help sustainably meet our country’s growing energy demands.” He also noted that advances in long duration storage technologies could support on-site clean energy systems and aid in decarbonizing hard-to-electrify industries.
The project will utilize renewable energy sources, like solar and wind, to convert water into clean renewable hydrogen via an electrolyzer. GKN Hydrogen’s storage system can hold up to 500 kilograms of hydrogen in solid state by binding molecules in a metal hydride at low pressure, eliminating the need for compression. This hydrogen can then be utilized in an on-site fuel cell to generate zero-emissions electricity.
Jim Petrecky, chief operating officer at GKN Hydrogen, said, “We believe that hydrogen has the potential to revolutionize the energy sector, and our solutions are designed to make this transition as seamless as possible.” He added that evaluating commercial use cases will be key to identifying deployment strategies as the hydrogen economy scales up.
The research will leverage NREL’s Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) platform to validate various commercial and industrial decarbonization applications. The exact use case will depend on the integration with solar, electrolyzers, battery storage and fuel cells.
Katherine Hurst, NREL’s principal investigator for the project, said, “The ARIES platform and infrastructure in Colorado aims to help accelerate the deployment of innovative energy technologies related to renewable energy, storage solutions and interactive loads.” She emphasized that this project will develop solutions to address the complexities of modern energy systems.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office allocated $1.7 million in funding for NREL to implement GKN Hydrogen’s storage subsystem. SoCalGas contributed $400,000 for research, development, and demonstration efforts and will assist in identifying potential commercial applications. The project is expected to continue until December 2026.
