Great Britain has a world class gas grid and currently fossil gas provides around 83% of its heat in buildings and most of its industrial heat. Delivering low carbon heat through blended hydrogen would make the most of the existing gas grid network and means that customers do not require disruptive and expensive changes in their homes.
This project will help us to reach the UK Government’s target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. We reach net zero when the amount of carbon we add to the atmosphere is no more than the amount taken away.
In our homes
Blending low carbon hydrogen offers a way of providing energy to homes without any changes to our appliances, buildings, or heating patterns. We know people love to use gas for cooking and heating. To date, HyDeploy has already shown that hydrogen can be blended safely into existing networks without any disruption to consumers.
In industry
Industrial processes are energy intensive and often require high temperatures, such as glass or ceramics manufacturing. Gas does a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of supplying industrial users with heat in manufacturing processes.
Blending low carbon hydrogen provides a viable pathway to maintain our industrial baseline, whilst enabling industry to transition to decarbonise and reach net zero.
The HyDeploy partnership developed and delivered in a consortium partnership between:
1st Trial
HyDeploy is generating evidence to demonstrate how blended hydrogen can be used safely. The first trial took place at Keele University on a private gas network, where their campus site received blended gas between November 2019 and March 2021. Read more here about the first HyDeploy trial at Keele University.
The second trial took place in the village of Winlaton near Gateshead, in North East England. The trial ran from August 2021 for a ten-month period. You can find out more about the HyDeploy blending trial in Winlaton here.
The next step is to continue evidence gathering on safety of blended hydrogen through industrial trials to complement evidence gathered from trials in Keele and Winlaton. This will complete safety evidence needed to allow the UK Government to make decisions on the future role of hydrogen blending within the gas networks. For more details on how we are preparing industrial and commercial users to get blended gas click here.
Click below to see a short animation about why hydrogen is being explored for UK energy.
Project phases – Keele University
HyDeploy is generating evidence to demonstrate how blended hydrogen can be used safely. The first trial took place at Keele University on a private gas network supplying their campus site between November 2019 and March 2021.
Project phases – Winlaton
Following the success of the initial trial at Keele, we initiated the second phase of HyDeploy to blend natural gas with up to 20% hydrogen in to homes in the village of Winlaton near Gateshead, in the North East of England. Blending start in August 2021 and the trial is due to end in the summer of 2022.