Two Hydrogen Power Stations Connected to Electricity Grid in China

China has come up with an exclusive development in utilising solid hydrogen for electricity generation as China Southern Power Grid’s two hydrogen power stations  are connected to the grid, recently.

Out of the two stations, one of the stations, Nansha Smart Hydrogen Station, located in Guangzhou City, south China’s Guangdong Province,contains seven advanced solid hydrogen storage facilities.The other hydrogen power station, located in Kunming City, southwest China’s Yunnan Province, has already stored 165 kilograms of hydrogen power.Around 2.300 KW hours of electricity, during peak hours, can be supplied by this hydrogen storage and it can generate power continuously for 23 hours.

Commenting on the development, Zheng Xin, a Senior Researcher at Nansha Power Station of China Southern Power Grid, said “The facility can store 200 cubic meters of hydrogen with high density. The volume would be 20 times larger if we use the normal 3 MPa hydrogen tanks.”

He further informed, “Highly efficient and easy to use, solid hydrogen storage is a form of chemical storage for storing power generated by photovoltaic, wind or other new energy sources. The energy can later be released as needed and used as electricity through fuel cells.”

Lei Jinyong, the general manager of Hydrogen Energy Research Center of China Southern Power Grid, informed,”By integrating hydrogen power production, storage, generation and refueling, the power station can achieve conversion between green electricity and green hydrogen. This can solve the problem of unreliability and seasonal fluctuations in new energy power generation.

 Elaborating on this, Wang Chengshan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said, “In the future, hydrogen power will account for an increasingly larger proportion in the power grid, while the proportion of green hydrogen will go up as well. The electro-hydrogen coupling technology will be one of the revolutionary technologies that drives the evolution of power system.