Hydrogen-wind system supported by Hydrogenics
The news is a few days old now, but Hydrogenics Corp. of Mississauga, Ontario, has been awarded a contract to supply an electrolyzer-based hydrogen refuelling station, as well as compression, storage and dispenser equipment, to Basin Electric Power Cooperative of Bismarck, N.D.
“The station is one of the first United States-based hydrogen fueling stations to use electricity from wind power resource to produce hydrogen from water, in this case using electricity generated by wind resources either owned or contracted by Basin Electric,” the company said in a statement.
Hydrogenics has been involved with a similar project at Exhibition Place, where the turbine is (was once?) rigged to produce hydrogen that dispensed from an on-site filling station. I believe another project of this type is being done on Prince Edward Island. It’s all very neat, and while these projects prove it can be done, I’m still waiting to hear the economic argument to justify going down this path.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca