Powering Isolated Territories with Hydrogen Energy Systems (PITCHES)

PITCHES will demonstrate the feasibility of a hydrogen economy in a remote community. PITCHES will deploy and demonstrate an integrated hydrogen solution, including renewably-powered generation, delivery and use of hydrogen, in the Orkney Islands. The project will put in place systems to transport hydrogen from 2 generation locations to a number of end uses, providing electricity to the Kirkwall harbour district, heating local buildings and fuelling a fleet of fuel cell electric vehicles. The PITCHES project will explore the replicability of such systems to isolated, off-grid communities, including in Sub Saharan Africa, by testing configurations of the system, and identifying business models which best suit off-grid communities in developing countries. PITCHES will demonstrate that existing hydrogen technologies can be used to develop a new energy system to meet transport, electricity and heating needs of remote communities, showing that hydrogen based energy systems have the potential to reduce reliance on imported fuels, reduce carbon emissions, and in future as the technology develops, to reduce energy costs.