Zero-carbon Quarters.

Source: http://h2-international.com

The Paris Climate Agreement set goals that bring about the creation of new quarters that won’t depend on fossil fuels but renewable energies. The cost to switch energy sources will be reduced as the number of users increases, hence the importance of building new housing solutions using clean energy.

Esslingen in Germany has started to develop a zero-trace neighbourhood. Neue Weststadt will comprise 450 houses, offices and commercial areas. They are also building a new campus that will be finished in 2025. The project is named “climate-neutral quarter” and will be completed in 2022. It is expected that the excess energy (1,700KW peak) will be deployed to generate green hydrogen that will be provided to houses, transport or reconverted into electricity in the Combined Heat and Energy Plant (CHP) or reverted to the natural gas grid.

The greatest innovation of this project is that the energy is going to be produced in the district itself so that the excess heat from the 1 MW electrolyzer will be used to heat the surrounding buildings.

The hydrogen tank was delivered in November 2020. Felix Mayer, project manager at the developer Green Hydrogen Esslingen, explained: “The weight is due, in particular, to the 0.5-inch (1.2-cm) thickness of the tank’s stainless steel wall. The tank needs this in order to withstand the high number of load cycles as the pressure increases and decreases…The tank can hold 30 kilograms of hydrogen. That doesn’t sound very much but the specific energy density of hydrogen is extremely high. For example, a full tank is equivalent to 1,000 kWh in terms of its heating value. The connected CHP plant can run for more than two hours on a full tank and this means, for instance, that the 167 housing units in Block D can be provided with energy, and a few more homes besides.”

Norbert Fisch has opted for a German CHP since they have received funds from the German Ministries of education and Economy, thus the funds revert to Germany again.