2017-2018 Hydrogen Student Design Contest - Rules & Registration

2017 HEF Power-To-Gas Contest - Rules & Guidelines Published, Registration Open

The 2017 Hydrogen Student Design Contest challenges student teams from around the world to design a "Power-to-Gas System". This system uses electricity to produce hydrogen for cross market uses including energy storage, ancillary services, and transportation fuel.

Participating student teams will choose a site in their area, engage their local electric and gas utilities, coordinate with regulatory bodies and safety experts, and create educational materials, including a short video. Registration deadline is September 15, 2017, and interested students can sign up here >> while recruiting their team.

The Contest is supported by Title Sponsor Southern California Gas Company and Supporting Sponsors Air Liquide and Hydrogenics.

In a global effort to reduce carbon emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels, which are causing anthropogenic climate change, many countries around the globe have committed to renewable energy and zero emission technologies. This is causing a transition of the energy sector from centralized to a more decentralized form of production, leading to significant challenges along the way. The challenges on the electricity side include overproduction of renewable energy during peak times, resulting in curtailment and loss of resources, strains on the transmission grid during times of high production, intermittency issues with the need for energy storage or reserve generation, etc. Furthermore, many stakeholders in the transportation sector are preparing for adoption of near-zero or zero emission transportation solutions, not only for passenger vehicles, but also the entire goods movement sector, to reduce or eliminate local health hazards from criteria pollutants like particulate matter, SOx and NOx. Finally, governments are also creating global ozone and greenhouse gas reduction goals.

While there is no solution that can address all of these challenges, power-to-gas (P2G) can address a number of these issues, and deserves to be evaluated closely. Power-to-gas systems use excess renewable power to produce hydrogen from water through electrolysis. The hydrogen can be transported through the natural gas grid via direct blending or further conversion to methane from waste carbon streams. The hydrogen could also be transported by other means, by truck or pipeline, or used directly at the point of production. The stored chemical energy can then be used to generate electricity via a fuel cell or other generation device, as a transportation fuel, for space and water heating in residential and commercial buildings to provide heat for industrial processes, and any other purpose for which hydrogen or methane is currently used.

Unlike batteries that will require significant capital investments at larger scale and can only provide storage for a few hours, P2G has the potential to leverage existing infrastructure, such as the natural gas pipeline system to provide energy storage for days, weeks, or months, shifting energy from season to season as needed. As the world transitions more toward renewable power sources like wind and solar, the ability to store large amounts of excess power for extended time periods will be critical to supporting a renewable power grid.

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