£2.3m funding for Eco-Island hydrogen vehicle infrastructure

Project leader ITM Power is to get £1.3m in order to supply its core hydrogen technology and work with the other partners to integrate it into the grid and power system.

The Eco-Island project aims to make the entire island carbon neutral and energy independent by 2020 based on a combination of solar, wind, geothermal, tidal and waste-to-energy generation.

Speaking to The Engineer in November last year when Eco-Island was unveiled, co-founder David Green said: ‘The big problem is about demand and supply balancing… trying to get to a point where you can take surplus generating capacity and store it, hold it and release it when you need it.’

Part of that solution will be to design, build, install and operate two grid-connected hydrogen refuelling platforms on the Isle of Wight, with 100kg/day and 15kg/day capacities, respectively for the operation of a fleet of hydrogen vehicles.

‘We’ve got a quarter of a megawatt of load that can be turned on and off in one second, which is everything that you need to be able to balance against intermittent renewable power,’ Dr Graham Cooley, ITM chief executive, told The Engineer in light of the most recent announcement.