Mississauga, Ontario: Hydrogenics Corporation announced July 23 that it, as part of a consortium of seven partners, has successfully kicked off the INGRID project, a major research, development and demonstration project focused on power storage with an overall budget of € 23.9 million. The project will be funded with a financial contribution of € 13.8 million by the European Commission within the Seventh Framework Programme for European Research and Innovation and will take four years to complete. The government funds will be used to offset Hydrogenics’ research and product development costs over the four year duration of the project.
The core innovation of the INGRID project will consist of combining solid-state high-density hydrogen storage systems and electrolysis with advanced ICT technologies for smart distribution grids monitoring and control in a scenario of high penetration of renewable energy sources in order to balance power supply and demand.
Consortium members include Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, the largest privately owned Italian ICT technology provider and coordinator of this project, Agenzia per la tecnologia e l'Innovazione (ARTI, Puglia, Italy), which represents the operational arm of Puglia regional authority for the innovation and technology transfer, Enel Distribuzione, Italy's largest electricity distribution company, Hydrogenics (Belgium), the leading provider of hydrogen generators, the French McPhy Energy SA a leader in innovative technologies for solid and safe hydrogen storage, and the research institutions Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico (RSE, Italy), leader in research projects in the field of power generation, transmission and distribution and TECNALIA (Spain).
The consortium will design, build, deploy and operate a 39 MWh energy storage facility in the Puglia region in Italy using McPhy hydrogen-based solid state storage and Hydrogenics electrolysis technology and fuel cell power systems.
The region currently has an installed base of over 3,500 MW of solar, wind, and biomass energy systems. The solid state hydrogen energy storage installation is capable of safely storing more than 1 ton of hydrogen – the largest ever built – and includes a novel fast responding 1.2 MW hydrogen generator. The installation will provide “effective and smart balancing support” for the local grid managed by Enel Distribuzione. Several potential value streams for the generated carbon-neutral hydrogen will be investigated.