“Toshiba participates for three years in the experiment of electricity storage using hydrogen which is implemented in the United Kingdom from November 2012. This project is aimed to utilize hydrogen as a storage battery for absorption of load changes to generate a renewable energy. With ten participants including ITM Power of United Kingdom, the project will build up facilities in the Island of Wight of the country by the spring of 2014 to carry out experiments for three years. Following the planned verification of collected data, the project will be brought into practical use in or after 2016.

As the renewable energy system in use of solar or wind power generation depends solely on nature, there has been a great deal of load changes in the generated electricity. For equalization of such load changes, a secondary battery like a lithium ion cell is usually used, but this experiment makes the most of hydrogen as a medium for power storage.

In case of a secondary battery, the larger scaled it is to store electricity, the higher cost is inevitably required for facilities. However, in case of electricity storage by hydrogen, on the other hand, it can be expected to respond to a large-scaled demand for electricity storage like in Smart Community by effective use of fuel cells or hydrogen stations. In the experiment, hydrogen is produced by electrolysis of water with power generated by renewable energy, so that electricity can be generated by fuel cell whenever necessary for storage or use. It is also planned to install a hydrogen station for supply of hydrogen to fuel cell vehicles.

Toshiba’s Communication Research Center of Europe (belonging to its European research group) joins this project for designing and systemizing the energy management of the network system which connects the electricity distribution network with the hydrogen storage facilities. The data collecting system for the adjustment of hydrogen consumption or volume in demand will be taken care of by Cable and Wireless of communication company, while the enhancement of fuel cell or hydrogen fuel will be assisted by Arcola Energy of fuel cell manufacturer.

Toshiba now focuses on the Smart Community business, and wishes to take the result of this experiment into the basic technology of its own and take part in similar projects abroad and home from now on.”