SoCalGas produces first green hydrogen in a home microgrid

Southern California Gas (SoCalGas) has reported producing its first renewable hydrogen in a microgrid.

The microgrid project, named the [H2] Innovation Experience, is located in Downey in the southeast of Los Angeles and features a 185m2 home that can use hydrogen on a 24/7/365 basis.

Solar panels will provide power, with the excess converted into green hydrogen, which can then be stored and reconverted back into electricity, as needed, via an on-site hydrogen fuel cell.

Hydrogen will also be blended with natural gas and used in the home’s tank-less water heater, clothes dryer, gas stove, fireplace and barbecue grill.

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While the home is still to be completed, the project’s electrolyser has now produced its first full kilogram of green hydrogen, which also is SoCalGas’s first ever production.

“The production of the first kilogram of renewable hydrogen by SoCalGas is a key milestone as we prepare to welcome visitors to our [H2] Innovation Experience in the coming months,” said Neil Navin, Vice President of Clean Energy Innovations at SoCalGas.

“This project shows the essential role clean fuels like renewable hydrogen can play in meeting California’s clean energy and resiliency goals and highlights our progress toward making net zero a reality.”

SoCalGas’s hydrogen home, which is being constructed to LEED platinum standards, is believed to be the first of its kind in the US and in 2021 was named by Fast Company as one its ‘World changing ideas’ in the North America category.

The [H2] Innovation Experience is one of more than ten initiatives that SoCalGas is undertaking related to hydrogen and aims to demonstrate the resiliency and reliability of a renewable hydrogen microgrid to power neighbourhoods.

In September SoCalGas was one of a consortium of utilities proposing a large-scale hydrogen blending initiative in California. It follows over year-long testing of blending the company has been undertaking at its Engineering Analysis Center and Centralized Training Facility.