I’ve talked several times before about the Hydrogen Engine Center in Algona, Iowa. For a couple of years now, this company has been building new internal combustion engines or reconditioning and retrofitting older engines to run on hydrogen and other alternative energy fuels.
The Hydrogen Engine Center (HEC) has just received an order for a 250kW 4+1TM Oxx Power® hydrogen generator. This generator will be part of the world’s first wind-hydrogen-diesel energy project to be tested in Ramea, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
Ramea is a remote region that is already using powered supplied by a similar wind-diesel energy system that has been online since 2004. The wind-hydrogen-diesel power system will make the electrical generation just that much cleaner and greener in the region.
With the HEC Oxx generation system, four engines run in parallel with one in reserve to maximize reliability. Wind will be the main source of electricity for Ramea with the extra power stored as hydrogen via the electrolysis of water.
When the wind is dormant, stored hydrogen will be run through the Oxx generator to create electricity. Diesel fuel will be used as a last resort and backup for this power system. While the wind-hydrogen-fuel cell configuration has grabbed many headlines in the past, HEC is not letting us forget that internal combustion engines play a vital role going forward for supplying clean, renewable hydrogen energy.