HELES: Hydrogen Enabled Local Energy Systems

The project will integrate local energy, the built environment and transport systems by demonstrating a system that will help balance local energy demand and supply at the district level. It brings together two disparate energy sources and an energy carrier on the supply side, which will be designed to respond to local demand for electrical energy, gas and transport fuels in an integrated way. In practice this means an integration of solar PV and landfill gas with the production of hydrogen by rapid response electrolysis. This will demonstrate the use of hydrogen produced from an intermittent renewable energy source as a supply/load optimising intermediary fuel with the potential for use as a transport fuel and as a renewable low-carbon contribution to local gas supplies. The project will be the first joint deployment of rapid response electrolysis with solar PV and landfill gas in the UK, and the first to combine these technologies with the equipment necessary to create and store hydrogen for conversion to electricity and for other uses including zero emission fuel and for injection to demonstrate Power-to-Gas energy storage.