A logging or planting crew camp is usually a cluster of portable cabins: a cookhouse with fridges, a freezer and a cooktop, a shower block with hot water, sleeping quarters with lights and heaters, and a drying room for wet gear. Radios, chainsaw battery packs and phones need charging. In remote blocks there is no grid, so a diesel generator runs from dawn to well after dark. The fuel, the servicing and the noise are all costs the crew lives with every day.
Without the grid, hydrogen has to be made from wind or micro-hydro. A camp on an exposed ridge or near a steady stream can charge the system, storing hydrogen at 30 bar or less for weeks. The fuel cell then supplies the camp through the evening peak, with a LiFePO4 battery and 15 kW hybrid inverter handling the surges when everyone gets back and puts the jug on.
How it works →
Lights, fridges, a freezer, radios, charging and a drying room fan fit within 15 kW continuous. Large electric water heaters, ovens and heaters in every cabin can push past it at the evening peak, so the pilot would count them. Round-trip efficiency is 30% or less, so heating from hydrogen is costly. Gas for cooking and hot water may still make sense, with hydrogen covering the electrical side quietly. Whether a camp has enough wind or water to charge is a site question.
That depends on how a pilot installation is set up. The system includes a hydrogen store, electrolyser and fuel cell that would need to be installed and commissioned properly at each site. Portability would be assessed in the pilot.
Then the system cannot recharge itself off-grid. Hydrogen is made only from off-peak grid power, wind or micro-hydro. A camp with none of those is not a good fit for this system.
For the electrical loads, it is designed to, where the camp's wind or water can make enough hydrogen. Many crews may keep the generator as a backup during the pilot until they trust the new supply.
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