Storage

UNSW says home hydrogen storage for rooftop solar could be real by 2020

Published by

One Step Off The Grid

A New South Wales-based effort to develop renewable hydrogen storage solutions – including a 5kWh home solar storage system – has received $3.5 million in backing from green investment outfit Providence Asset Group.

Tamworth-based company H2Store is working on the technology in partnership with the University of New South Wales, which promises to overcome one of the key barriers to realising the potential of green hydrogen in Australia – storage and transportation.

“The biggest challenge with hydrogen is it is very low density, and it needs big storage tanks, which makes transporting it not viable,” H2Store’s Llewellyn Owens told the Northern Daily Leader last week.

“We’ve made a metal that absorbs the hydrogen and then releases it, which makes it very easy to transport. We’ve known that you can transport hydrogen this way for a while, but the metal had to be heated up to 300 to 400 degrees for the hydrogen to be released. This one basically operates entirely at room temperature.”

The UNSW said on Tuesday that the money from Providence Asset Group would be used to deliver phase one of the four-stage project, including the creation of a home hydrogen storage prototype to compete with – and even outperform – current home battery systems, like the Tesla Powerwall.

The team hopes to have a 5kWh home storage system prototype ready by the end of this year, and a product on the market late in 2020. This would be followed by a “ramped up” 15kWh commercial-scale storage system.

Read the full story on RenewEconomy’s sister site, One Step Off The Grid…

Sophie Vorrath

Sophie is editor of Renew Economy and editor of its sister site, One Step Off The Grid . She is the co-host of the Solar Insiders Podcast. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.

Recent Posts

Gas networks want Victoria to stall electrification. Households and industry should hope it doesn’t oblige

As more and more Victorian households quit gas, there remain real and unresolved questions about…

14 October 2026

Sick kitchens: Gas exposes commercial chefs to dangerous levels of air pollution, study finds

Study compares electric and gas commercial kitchens in the US, find gas exposes chefs to…

14 October 2026

Origin sticks by 2029 Eraring closure date, as plant runs at lower capacity factors and battles tube leaks

Origin boss says the country's largest coal plant remains on course for an exit in…

14 October 2026

Gas lobby gets its wish as Labor dials back domestic reservation scheme

The powers of the resources minister to change how much a gas exporter must quarantine…

14 October 2026

How do we power the data centre boom while also quitting coal? There are three options

How do we get the renewables and AI industries to work together to build out…

14 October 2026

Snowy Hydro says long-awaited cost reveal is “imminent,” faces gas supply issues at new Kurri Kurri plant

Snowy Hydro says latest cost reveal of Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project is imminent, says…

14 October 2026