Let us help you explore the potential of hydrogen-powered equipment
We regularly read press releases about a ‘hydrogen trial’ or ‘hydrogen demonstrator’. These are great steps forward for the industry and good learning for those involved.
The term ‘trial’ or ‘demonstrator’ leads us to think that these activities are something new or novel. The fact is that these activities may be new for the folks trialling the kit in their specific application, but it’s not something that’s new to TCP.
We started developing and then deploying our hydrogen power and lighting equipment around 10 years ago, and have been building up our fleet over this period. It was a slow start, but we’ve heavily invested over the last few years and now we have over 700 pieces of hydrogen powered equipment. We’ve been powering everything from speed cameras to large scale site welfare, and lighting it all up with our own hydrogen powered portable lighting tower.
Since 2022, we have accumulated over 60,000 operating hours with our zero-emission microgrid equipment. Our hydrogen lighting solutions have also proven their reliability with an impressive 3 million operating hours since 2020.
During this time, we’ve honed our customer engagement process for lighting and power. We provide everything from the gas itself to the safety assessments that are required and everything in between. We will manage every part of the deployment, so all you need to think about is the work you’ve got to do on-site. We make it easy.
There’s one thing about hydrogen use that seems to be limiting its uptake more than anything else; cost. We realised very early on that a straight hydrogen solution to replace a diesel genset would not be cost effective in real-world operations. This may change in the future as the price of hydrogen reduces (or the cost of diesel and CO2 emissions go up!), but for now we have found a solution that works well, and can be the same (or lower!) cost as running a diesel setup depending upon the project.
TCP has developed a solar-battery-hydrogen microgrid which runs very efficiently using our own proprietary equipment. In the summer months it uses very little hydrogen. In the UK winter, this flips around and we tend to use more hydrogen as we get less sun with the shorter days. However, this architecture proves the real benefit of using hydrogen in the microgrid-mix; resilience. We don’t suffer during the dreaded dunkelflaute periods, and we make the most of the sun when it’s shining. This really is the best of both worlds, and the whole time you have a zero emissions, zero noise and zero CO2 solution.
Alongside all of the hardware that makes this happen, we constantly monitor energy usage and work with your team to help them manage their energy usage. After all, the cheapest energy is the energy you don’t use.
If you want to ‘trial’ hydrogen, TCP are the first people you should call. We will help you through the whole process, make sure everything works reliably and safely, and you can get on with your work. It won’t be long before your ‘trial’ becomes business as usual, just like it is for us, and our many customers that have already embraced TCP products and services.
Written by Jim Irvine
TCP Eco, Development & Operations Director
