A green hydrogen heating trial in people’s homes, billed as the world’s first, is struggling to attract volunteer households — despite offering residents “bribes” of £1,000 ($1,233).
Ironically, one of the goals of the H100 Fife project in Scotland is to demonstrate “customer acceptance, interest and appetite for hydrogen heat”.
Gas distributor SGN, which is leading the 100% hydrogen project, is still short of its target of signing up 300 homes, despite opening registrations in November last year — and had only attracted 50 before offering the £1,000 incentive in August, according to Scottish investigative journalism platform The Ferret.
SGN said that sign-ups had ramped up since it began “direct recruitment” in October, the online platform reports.
All participating households are due to receive free hydrogen boilers, cookers and fires — and promises that heating bills would be no higher than if they were using natural gas, despite the likely higher costs of using green hydrogen produced via a nearby 7MW wind turbine.
Homes would be connected by a newly laid network of 100% hydrogen pipes, rather than converting existing gas pipelines so that non-participants would not have their supplies cut off.
Energy regulator Ofgem — which has contributed £18m to the scheme — says that 180-250 homes would be a sufficient sample size, but an SGN document from September talked about a minimum of 270 homes. The gas distributor has not revealed exactly how many households have signed up, but told The Ferret that the figure was “over 250”.
The project had been due to start in 2023, but SGN now says it is confident that it can start delivering H2 to homes in the second half of 2024.
“H100 was supposed to be testing the level of public interest and acceptance of hydrogen heating but it has shown how little interest there is even when they are bribing people to take part,” Elizabeth Leighton, director of the Existing Homes Alliance, told The Ferret.
“The H100 project is looking like a failed side-note in history even before the first hydrogen flows.”
H100, which is being financially supported by all four UK gas distributors, is not the only planned hydrogen heating pilot in the country that is experiencing problems with customer participation.
Residents in the proposed “hydrogen village” in the Whitby area of the town of Ellesmere Port in northwest England, are rebelling against plans by gas distributor Cadent to cut off their gas supply and replace it with 100% hydrogen.
This has prompted accusations that Cadent is bullying local residents into participating in a trial that may increase both the risks of explosions and heating costs once it has concluded. The gas distributor has said it will provide electric heat pumps to residents that do not want H2 in their homes.
Cadent has pledged to subsidise the cost of hydrogen during the trial but it has not guaranteed that it will continue to do so afterwards, or whether it will switch the homes back to fossil gas or participants will be left to burn expensive hydrogen.
At least 32 independent studies have shown that burning green hydrogen in domestic boilers is a bad idea, as it requires five to six times more renewable electricity to produce the same amount of heat as electric heat pumps.
The Whitby and Fife trials are both competing to fulfil the UK govenrment’s pledge to deliver a hydrogen village by 2025.
Hydrogen Insight has approached SGN for comment.
