Commissioned by Uniper and utilised by the maintenance contractor, Siemens Energy, GeoPura’s 250kW Hydrogen Power Unit (HPU) was used to power the outage village, including welfare facilities, and EV charging for all electric vehicles on site, H2 View understands.

According to GeoPura, the maintenance outage at its CDC power station is the first to have been powered by green hydrogen in this way. With the 445MW natural gas power plant undergoing routine maintenance outages every four to five years, the recent outage has proved the case for hydrogen-powered back-up power.

GeoPura says the HPU was fuelled using green hydrogen produced by renewable energy from a biomass facility nearby.

Packaged within a standard 20ft shipping container, the HPU is built on industrial fuel cells, offering 250kW of electrical output, 80kW thermal output, and 216kW battery storage, which the companies estimate saved 94 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions during the outage.

In 2021, GeoPura powered an entire episode of BBC Studios Natural History Unit’s Winterwatch with its 250kW HPU, offering continuous, uninterrupted, emissions free, critical power to the broadcast unit.

Read more: World first: BBC completes broadcast powered by green hydrogen in the UK

Commenting on the outage, Tom Kavanagh, Plant Manager for CDC and Killingholme at Uniper, said, “Temporary power requirements during outages are often reliant on diesel generators, but having a GeoPura HPU fuelled by green hydrogen, has enabled us to significantly reduce the emissions associated with the maintenance works, contributing to our 2035 objective.

“The use and reliability of the GeoPura HPU for the first time ever during a Uniper power station outage has been very positive. The support provided by GeoPura on the installation, operation and fuelling of the system made switching to this new technology at our CDC plant, seamless for us. And Uniper will share the lessons learned from using this technology across our fleet of UK power stations.”

Darren Davidson, Managing Director of Siemens Energy Gas Services UK, commented, “Initially the HPU was primarily being used to power the contractor cabins and provide EV charging, however once established and the technology was proven to be reliable on site, its use was extended to replace an additional two diesel generators. Due to increased flexibility the system offers, the HPU was more than capable of supporting this additional load and provided even greater savings than originally planned.”

Andrew Cunningham, Managing Director of GeoPura, added, “This is another example of how hydrogen is being used across multiple industries to reduce emissions, improve air quality and provide reliable, critically backed power displacing high carbon dioxide-emitting diesel generators.

“Reaching Net Zero in the UK is going to need all parts of the economy to play their part, including energy companies such as Uniper and by powering a major outage such as this, we continue to demonstrate the powerful role hydrogen can play in reaching this goal.