Australian Gas Infrastructure Group in bid for hydrogen to power new homes in Adelaide

A bold bid for renewable energy will see new homes in Adelaide 100 per cent powered by hydrogen for heating and cooking.

New housing estates in Adelaide will be offered 100 per cent hydrogen gas for heating and cooking from 2025, under a plan announced on Wednesday.

Speaking at Tonsley for the opening of what is believed to be the biggest trial in the world of blending hydrogen into suburban gas supply, Australian Gas Infrastructure Group chief executive Ben Wilson said his company was ambitious about the energy transition.

“This is a globally significant project,” he said. “This is not an innovation project in a sandbox that gets dismantled after 18 months, this is here to stay.

“It is the start of our journey, we are ambitious, we recognise the importance of decarbonisation, we recognise the importance of getting to net zero by 2050.

“By 2025, we want to offer a 100 per green hydrogen product to new housing estates.

“So when you’re at school and work in the middle of the day, your rooftop solar is producing power and if there’s no demand in the home for that power we will make hydrogen from your rooftop solar.

“Then when you’re at home in the evening and it’s cold and dark, you can use your solar in the form of hydrogen.”

AGIG expects to use several different models for new housing estates.

If close enough to its $14.5m Hydrogen Park SA (HyP SA) in Tonsley, gas could be piped to the estate.

Further afield, small, suburban-scale electrolysers could be installed, where water would be split into hydrogen and oxygen using renewably-generated electricity such as solar.

Or, hydrogen manufactured at Tonsley could be pumped into industrial-size gas cylinders, which would be taken by trailer to the site and plugged into a local pipe network.

A red tube trailer ready to be filled at Hydrogen Park SA. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

Mr Wilson said the company, including its SA subsidiary Australian Gas Networks, aimed to have hydrogen blended into all gas supply by 2030 and then be 100 per cent hydrogen by 2040.

“We would like Adelaide to be the first state capital to be on a hydrogen blend,” he said.

The Tonsley facility on Wednesday began blending 5 per cent hydrogen into supply for 700 homes in Mitchell Park.

HyP SA will also be used to fill tube trailers for dispatch around the country.

Energy and Mining Minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan said it was a pioneering moment for SA.

Premier Steven Marshall said “this is just the start”. “It is a moment in history,” he said.

National hydrogen strategy leader Alan Finkel said the project was the biggest in Australia and, he believed, the biggest in the world.

Hydrogen produced at HyP SA will be more expensive than natural gas but AGIG will absorb the difference.

Mr Wilson said the cost was not material to a company of AGIG’s size but would be useful in developing the technology.

“At the moment this plant will produce hydrogen in the double digit per kilogram,” he said.

AGIG’s next projects in WA and Albury-Wodonga would be around $5-$6 a kg.

“And we’re highly confident … that by the end of this decade with scale and blending, we will be below the Federal Government’s target of under $2/kg,” he said.

AGIG head of strategy Kristin Raman and Sprout chef Callum Hann test a hydrogen-powered barbecue. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

Mr Wilson said the company was talking to many people when asked about the Opposition’s plans to build a hydrogen-fired power station in SA.

Opposition leader Peter Malinauskas said HyP SA was a “a great example of what can happen when governments invest in renewable energy”. The former Labor government provided a $4.9m grant to the project.

“It demonstrates we need to take the next big step, hydrogen technology is the future,” he said.

AGIG has also received $1.28m from the federal Australian Renewable Energy Agency to investigate increasing the blend to 10 per cent.

At a ceremony to mark the opening, Sprout chef Callum Hann tried out a hydrogen-fuelled barbecue.

“It’s the first time I’ve used one,” he said. “It seems to have good, even heat. And if we’ve got the technology to use gas which is green, then why not.”

Originally published as Australian Gas Infrastructure Group in bid for hydrogen to power new homes in Adelaide