Amid Doubts, Turkey Powers Ahead with Hydrogen Technologies

Turkey has become home to cutting-edge technology advances in hydrogen energy, which some say can fill crucial niches within a larger clean energy economy

By Julia Harte, SolveClimate News

Hydrogen fuel-cell test station at the International Center for Hydrogen Energy Hydrogen fuel-cell test station at the International Center for Hydrogen Energy Technologies (ICHET) in Instanbul, Turkey/Credit: ICHET

ISTANBUL, Turkey—At the end of June, Henry Puna, prime minister of the Cook Islands, a 90-square-mile archipelago in the South Pacific, traveled more than 11,000 miles on an unusual fact-finding mission to Turkey’s Bozcaada island in the Aegean Sea.

Puna came to see Bozcaada’s hospital and the house of its governor — two of the only buildings in the world partially powered by hydrogen-generated electricity. The unique prototype technology, which sounds like a back-to-the-future experiment, has been churning out zero-emissions power for the past few months.

At the governor’s house a 20-kilowatt rooftop solar array and a free-standing 30-kilowatt wind turbine generate clean electricity, which is run through an electrolyzer that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen gas gets compressed and stored in tanks on the island and is later converted back into electricity whenever extra power is needed. The gas can also fuel hydrogen cars or vessels.

Currently, Bozcaada’s system supplies all the electricity at both buildings, as well as a boat and golf cart. Combined, it’s equivalent to powering about 20 households in Turkey.

That minuscule amount is emblematic of the uphill battle that hydrogen technologies face in becoming a solution to reckon with in the contest for alternative fuels. Still, experts say the facilities on the small Aegean outpost, 175 miles southwest of Istanbul, illustrate some of the more promising uses of hydrogen as an energy carrier — especially its potential to fill crucial niches within a larger clean energy economy.

via Amid Doubts, Turkey Powers Ahead with Hydrogen Technologies | SolveClimate News.