Dominion Energy launched Ohio’s first hydrogen blending pilot program Friday to explore the use of hydrogen as a clean source of energy.
The Hydrogen Heights pilot program at Dominion’s Boston Heights Ohio Technical Training Center will test a blend of Dominion’s standard natural gases with 5% hydrogen to see how effective and safe it is to use in homes and businesses.
Hydrogen Heights features a small neighborhood of 16 mini-homes that will run a closed-loop service using the hydrogen blend.
“In those homes, we have anything gas appliance -- gas furnaces, gas stoves, gas lights, generators, things of that sort that will consume this blend,” Project Lead Engineer Joshua Davis said. “Right now, we're blending 5% hydrogen system wide. We want to be prepared to blend 5% hydrogen (statewide) by 2030 .”
The buildings will also serve as a training ground for Dominion employees who service buildings.
“We're trying, in each one of our territories, to train the employees in those territories while at the same time being part of industry groups, [like] the American Gas Association, and doing all the studies to show that this can be proven technology that is safe and has the potential to really decarbonize our industry as a whole,” Dominion Energy Technical Standards Strategic Advisor Sean Wallace said.
Natural gas releases methane into the atmosphere as part of the process of being burned, but hydrogen’s only byproduct is water vapor making it a clean source of energy. When the two are combined, hydrogen can be used in appliances that already rely on natural gas.
Using a 5% hydrogen blend can reduce carbon emissions by about 2%, Wallace said, since 5% less natural gas is being used. Though that might seem like a small number, he said it’s important to consider it at a larger scale.
“Think about 1.2 million customers in this state … and then have every operator that has a natural gas distribution system in the state of Ohio and then across all the states,” Wallace said. “You start to see that compounded component as a natural gas distribution system.”
Hydrogen is also a plentiful and universal resource, Wallace said, since it’s found in every water molecule. Through a process called electrolysis hydrogen can be separated from each H2O molecule and then transported or stored for future use.
“It’s almost like your high school chemistry experiment in terms of applying an electrical current to water, it'll actually separate the bond between the H2O molecule, hydrogen and oxygen,” Wallace said. “That's why electrolysis has so much interest right now from our industry, because we can do it green.”
Dominion Energy is committed to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, President Dan Weekley said, and Ohio’s pilot program, along with two others, is an effort to achieve that goal.
“[We] mentioned the project we have that's already serving customers out in Utah, we have a project under development in North Carolina and then we have the hydrogen blending here,” Weekley said. “Each one of them is testing a different attribute of hydrogen because I truly believe it is an energy source for the future."
