Home / Uses / Off-grid power for a remote fishing lodge

Keeping the catch frozen at a lodge with no lines

Remote fishing lodges on lakes, rivers and sounds often have no grid at all. Diesel is flown or shipped in. This page looks at hydrogen as a quieter way to store local wind or water power.

Freezers for the day's catch

A fishing lodge's defining load is refrigeration: chest freezers and a chiller for guests' catch, plus kitchen fridges and freezers. Add a smoker, a vacuum sealer, hot water for showers and the lodge lighting, and the load profile is steady through the day and night. A 15 kW system can carry a small to medium lodge comfortably, with peak headroom for compressors starting.

What it would keep running

Catch freezers and chillers
Kitchen fridges and cooking
Hot water for guest showers
Vacuum sealer and smoker
Lodge and jetty lighting

Using wind and water already there

Many remote lodges sit beside a stream with drop, or on an exposed shore with wind. Either can feed the electrolyser, storing surplus as hydrogen at 30 bar or less. Hydrogen keeps for weeks without losing charge, so a windy fortnight in the off season can top up the store before guests arrive.

That reduces the number of fuel drums barged or flown in, and with them the risk of a spill into the lake or river the guests came to fish. The fuel cell's only by-product is water, which returns to the loop.

How it works →

The H2OME loop: an electrolyser splits water into hydrogen, the hydrogen is stored in a tank for weeks, a fuel cell turns it into electricity for your home, and the water returns to the loop.

What it costs in energy

Round trip efficiency is 30% or less, so the wind or water resource has to be generous enough to cover those losses. The pilot would measure the site's resource before sizing the turbine and storage. Where the resource is thin, the honest answer may be that hydrogen is not the right fit and a smaller system or diesel backup still makes sense.

Questions

Can it work with no grid at all?

Yes, that is one of the configurations it is designed for, charging from wind or micro-hydro. It needs enough local resource to cover the round trip losses, which the pilot would assess first.

How much water does it need?

About 9 litres of filtered, de-ionised water per kilogram of hydrogen, and the fuel cell gives most of it back. A lake or river lodge has more than enough source water.

Does it remove the need for diesel entirely?

It could reduce diesel use a lot, but that depends on the site's wind or water. Where the resource is unreliable through a long calm or a dry autumn, some lodges may still want a small fallback plan for a fully booked season.

Elsewhere

Every use →

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