Sunshine is transformed into green hydrogen on an ambitious scale

"Prototype facility smashes record for converting solar power to hydrogen for its technology category.

In the pursuit of a carbon-free energy supply, scientists have demonstrated a large-scale power plant that uses the Sun’s rays to generate hydrogen fuel¹.

Hydrogen produced using renewable energy could serve as a green fuel for vehicles. Solar-to-hydrogen technology often performs well in the lab, but researchers trying to scale up these devices have struggled with challenges involving cost, efficiency and stability.

Isaac Holmes-Gentle and his colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne designed a prototype plant that concentrated sunlight in a large parabolic  7 metres wide dish then converted it into electricity using solar panels. A built-in electrolyser, powered by electricity and recycled heat from the solar panels, split water into oxygen and hydrogen gas.

The plant converted more than 20% of the solar energy it collected into hydrogen fuel — a record high for a system using recycled heat and operating in real-world conditions. Importantly, the plant produced hydrogen at a rate of 2 kilowatts, which is more than two orders of magnitude higher than previous results and puts the world one step closer to sustainable fuels." [1]

1. Nature 616, 415 (2023)