Standard Hydrogen CEO lays out plan for groundbreaking multi-use storage station

As the nation's energy system evolves, hydrogen is expected to play a critical role in revolutionizing the grid, supporting the deployment of renewables by providing demand flexibility, as well as partially offsetting intermittency issues on the supply side.

The acceleration of climate change--exacerbated by challenges around aging grid infrastructure, an evolving regulatory landscape, and new customer demands--brings with it a convergence of scenarios that could mark an inflection point for hydrogen-based technologies.

Startup developer Standard Hydrogen Corp. (SHC) is betting on it, with the development of the world’s first demonstration of the company’s multi-use, hydrogen-based energy storage station. The facility, to be sited in New York’s Capital Region, will feature SHC's Energy Transfer System (ETS) around onsite renewable hydro production, long-duration electrical energy storage, and DC fast-charging capabilities for electric vehicles, among other functions.

The station, to be built and operated by SHC and with services delivered to National Grid customers, will include a 1 MW electrolyzer with on-site storage, a stationary fuel cell, and charging and refueling capabilities for both electric and hydrogen vehicles.

“We have some system integration designs that we have developed to really make the most economic sense out of hydrogen and overcome what some people see as the high cost of hydrogen infrastructure,” Paul Mutolo, CEO at SHC, told NPM. “Looking at it from a systems perspective, we have identified customers’ needs in these different segments of transportation, grid energy storage, behind-the-meter electric power users, and we see an overlap of those needs that come together really well with what hydrogen can provide. Our ETS is designed to meet multiple needs at the same time and put the first of these facilities in the Northeast, where there really is very little hydrogen deployed today.”

The project could open the deployment of hydrogen facilities in the Northeast, which lags far behind states like California.

Studies show that the market is ripe for growth: hydrogen demand could quadruple within the next several decades, with a market potential of 22-41 metric tons annually, according to a recent NREL report. The U.S. Department of Energy is also going all-in on hydro-based technologies, shelling out USD 150m per year for research and development over the last decade.

“The project sets the stage to get in front of policymakers in Albany, agencies like the DEC and NYSERDA, as well as people directly in the capital, to be able to let them come and touch and feel hydrogen in its many different aspects,” Mutolo said. “In a hydrogen-fuel vehicle, in a fast DC charger that's completely renewable and has no emissions, in long-duration energy storage that allows us to look forward to the goals of the CLCPA, which require 100 percent renewable energy in the next couple of decades.”

The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act calls for an 85 percent reduction in GHG emissions by 2050, 100 percent zero-emission electricity by 2040, and 22 million tons of carbon reduction through energy efficiency and electrification. It also mandates 70 percent renewable energy by 2030, comprised of large penetrations of offshore wind, solar and energy storage.

“This type of facility allows the energy system to capture every single electron from a wind turbine to a solar panel and have no curtailment because of the flexible nature and long-duration style of energy storage,” Mutolo said. “Hydrogen is already out there in the energy system, especially in Europe, the Far East and in California. But to attract investment here in the Northeast where there is a great concentration of needs, both from the electric side and the transportation side, and to help policymaker understand how to fit these kinds of technologies into their rulemaking, which they’re doing right now--that's the importance of this demonstration with National Grid.”

Next level

Despite the global health crisis, the developer has achieved plenty of local traction over the past year and is now looking to expand into other Northeast states, working with various agencies to create a replicable network of facilities.

“We hope to have some NYSERDA support in that regard,” Mutolo said. “We’ve also had some great conversations with the Public Service Commission who, on the electric side, really had not had a lot of exposure to hydrogen, and so was unaware of its versatility and flexibility to serve many different needs. I think they are excited to see opportunities for where else it can be deployed in New York in the near-term.”

The system will reach its full potential at a distributed scale, says Mutolo, bringing clean power directly to communities, particularly in the many congested areas that dot the region.

“We see the power of delivering that to a neighborhood where you can start to offset the needs of a natural gas peaker plant, immediately improve the air quality, immediately displace the need for diesel-fuel trucks in congested urban areas and replace that with electric or hydrogen-powered vehicles,” Mutolo said. “And once you have a network of these facilities, you can aggregate them together and provide real long-duration energy storage for the network’s overall needs going forward.”

The retirement and replacement of the state’s peaker plants, particularly downstate, is currently in the works on several fronts. The New York Power Authority (NYPA) recently unveiled a landmark agreement with environmental justice groups to transition its fleet of citywide peaker power plants to clean energy technologies, marking the first time a utility has agreed to enter such a collaboration in the country.

A recent Strategen report shows it can be done by 2025, about 3.2 GW—approximately half of New York City's existing peaker plants—can be replaced with a combination of offshore wind, rooftop solar, energy efficiency measures, and battery storage. By 2030, all remaining peaker plants in the city--approximately 2.9 GW--can be replaced using a similar combination of resources.

SHC hopes to play a key role in taking some of these aging peakers offline and replacing them with hydrogen-based energy storage.

“We feel like we’ve got a really great value proposition to help do that," Mutolo said. "There’s certainly details left to be worked out--FERC 2222 is one of the big ones. We’ve got some designs that we think can be in place while the details of that are being ironed out, and we should still be in a good position to provide the kind of dynamic and versatile storage that the state needs.”

Order 2222 enables distributed energy resources to participate alongside traditional resources in regional organized wholesale markets through aggregations, allowing several sources of distributed electricity to aggregate to satisfy minimum size and performance requirements that each may not be able to meet individually.

The developer also hopes to see state incentives for long-duration storage, which will be integral to meeting New York's clean energy goals.

“I think it's certainly challenging to be where we are right now not having incentives to put out long-duration storage technologies,” Mutolo said. “We’re not there yet today. I do not have a crystal ball to say how best that will happen. We are following what we believe is a market-based approach, so we see the needs first on the utility side and among independent power producers. We are working with them to deploy energy storage first, and to get it as broadly deployed and as quickly deployed as needed. We want to work with the state to see how best to monetize those functions that energy storage provides.”