The award is part of a total funding of €1.3 million granted by the local government of the Tuscany Region in Italy for the 18-month project involving Acta, the University of Pisa, and Aequalis Srl, a specialist local wind turbine developer.
The combined system is being developed for use in homes that are not connected to the electricity grid and for remote renewable energy storage applications. It will also act as a demonstrator for larger-scale peak energy shaving applications.
Energy generated from a wind turbine will be used to produce hydrogen from water using Acta’s unique electrolysis technology. The pure, dry, compressed hydrogen can then be stored and used on demand to produce electricity through a mid-sized fuel cell. The company believes that future applications will include distributed microgeneration and storage, and ultimately that the system can be scaled up to utility-sized installations for use with commercial wind farms.
“We are very pleased to have received funding approval for this strategic application of our highly innovative hydrogen generator. The market for distributed power generation, storage and buffering applications is enormous, and this project will allow us to demonstrate the technical and commercial viability of our renewable energy storage solution,” said Paolo Bert, Acta’s Chief Executive. “We are confident that this project will demonstrate further the potential that our hydrogen generator has in promoting the adoption of renewable energy.”
Acta’s low-cost hydrogen generators represent a unique breakthrough in electrolyser technology. They can operate using mains power or intermittent renewable energy, and produce clean, dry hydrogen already at pressure for use in fuel cell and other industrial and consumer applications. This unique combination of features avoids the system complexity and energy cost of further cleaning, drying and compression of the hydrogen, resulting in a simple, compact, low-cost and highly efficient system that is ideally suited for energy conversion and storage applications. In such applications, which include battery replacement and renewable energy storage, low cost and high efficiency are critical to commercial viability, while hydrogen compression is essential for the energy density of the system. According to the company, no other water electrolyser currently on the market offers this combination of benefits.
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