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Another Day At The Hydrogen Powered Office

Posted: 29/04/2005

The world’s first office block powered by wind, rain and sun is to be built in Scotland in a bid to prove that eco-friendly energy can meet the needs of business. The £3.2 million Hydrogen Office will generate its own electricity using two wind turbines, solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells. The fuel cells enable excess electricity to be stored in the form of hydrogen made from water - possibly collected in a rain barrel - and then used during dark, windless days.

The office will house the headquarters of the Business Environment Partnership, which is behind the scheme, and space will be offered to small start-up businesses. It will have about 70 desks with computers, all powered by the building’s own internal sources, in an open-plan layout of some 1,000 square metres. The building will be linked to the national electricity grid to ensure power supplies, but its designers expect that the office will generate more energy than it uses.

The Scottish Executive say the project received a grant of £1.1 million from a European Union fund. The office will be built somewhere in Midlothian, although the actual site has not yet been chosen, and is expected to open early in 2007. Project manager Derek Mitchell said: "It is designed to demonstrate that with renewable and hydrogen energy you can meet the energy needs of an office of this size.

"We are using current technologies - we’re not developing any new ones - but we are linking them together in a way that’s never been done before." He said the building should largely appear to be an ordinary office block to a casual observer. The office will be built with large, south-facing windows and small ones to the north to maximise the heat from the sun during winter. Quality insulation and natural air circulation will also reduce energy needs.

The hydrogen cells contain enough energy to run the office for three days when there is no power from the sun or wind. The stores of hydrogen can be topped up using excess electricity generated by the two 40ft turbines - or possibly an array of ten smaller ones - and solar panels on the roof. This means that all the building requires is water, which could come from filtered rain, and all it produces is water and oxygen.

A wood-chip boiler, which is carbon-neutral as it burns wood rather than fossil fuels, will supply extra heat when needed. The mains supply will also kick in during sunlight/wind "droughts" of three weeks, which happen about once a year. It is thought the design will appeal to companies in remote areas, where creating a new electricity supply would be expensive, and businesses which need a guaranteed supply unaffected by power cuts. Announcing the European grant yesterday, Allan Wilson, Scotland’s deputy enterprise minister, said the Hydrogen Office was "a particularly exciting project".

"We are all aware that renewable energy has a vital role to play in combating climate change and ensuring a secure supply of power for generations to come," he said. "The Hydrogen Office will be a practical, working example of how renewable sources such as hydrogen can power whole buildings in an efficient, clean and environmentally-friendly way." Alan Hogarth, of the Confederation of British Industry in Scotland, said: "This is an interesting and worthwhile initiative and I’m sure business will look closely at this model to see how effective and efficient it is."

Ian Johnston / The Scotsman  
 

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