P.E.I. in the North Cape region of Prince Edward Island has decided to try to go off-grid using wind to hydrogen technology. The wind to hydrogen village was first announced in 2005 to go off grid using wind to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen and then run the hydrogen through a fuel cell to provide electricity for the community.
The hydrogen produced, however, is not only useful for providing electricity for homes, a farm and a fish plant, but also for supplying fuel for utility vehicles and a tour boat. Because of recent budget cuts by two third off the original funding, the project has been scaled by to experimentation and not demonstration.
The North Cape region has already installed an electrolyser which takes wind energy and converts the water to hydrogen. The tricky part of this project is installing controls to take the intermittent wind energy an optimizing it for use with the electrolyzer.
The hydrogen will then be stored in high pressure tanks for use by the fuel cell or as fuel for the vehicles. As budgets for hydrogen projects are slashed in Canada and the U. S. it is good to see some communities recognizing the value of pushing forward and putting their beliefs into action.