Could You Use Hydrogen ?

Throughout my research of all the different off grid power systems almost all of them seem to have pretty outrageous costs involved in getting something big enough to power a house or two. I’m talking in the realms of $50 – $60 THOUSAND dollars. That’s a lot of money for just the power system without even taking into account the building materials, site clearing or anything else you might require. Everyone that I speak to that has built before or has done off grid power either say go the full renewable system or just slap a diesel generator on the site and be done with it.

From what I can find diesel is the cheapest entry point for powering an off-grid system. From my experience on boats, remote islands, and other remote places you see a lot of diesel gen-sets powering these places. I have a couple of problems with this solution; firstly the environmental impacts of a dirty old generator, secondly the fuel bills and fuel transport.

If you’re in an area that has ample rainfall or an abundant water supply you could consider creating your own hydrogen. So far my research has pointed to a few different methods to do this. Electrolysis is the first method I came across that quite a few hobbyists and off grid people are attempting to use to power standard petrol generators. The second after some digging is Photocatalytic water splitting which is more attractive to me. I need to do more research onto the preferred, safe methods to do this and why people aren’t doing this more.

If you can use a smaller renewable system to generate and store the hydrogen maybe we have a chance of creating an affordable off grid power system that could pump the kilowatts we need to power two houses.