In retirement the house is where you spend most of your day. A long outage means a cold lounge, no hot meals, no television for the news, a fridge and freezer you have stocked carefully, and a phone you need to keep charged in case of a fall. Lifting a generator out of the shed and refuelling it gets harder each year, and family may be hours away.
The system is designed to look after itself. The battery and inverter switch over instantly in UPS mode, so lights, heat pumps and appliances keep running with nothing to press. The fuel cell recharges the battery from stored hydrogen made earlier on cheap night-rate power. There is no fuel to buy, no engine to service, and redundant leak sensors, automatic shutdown and venting work without anyone watching.
How it works →
Retirees on a fixed income should know this is not a way to cut the power bill. Round-trip efficiency is 30% or less, so stored power costs more than grid power. It is about reliability and peace of mind, and there is no price yet. If either of you relies on medical equipment, keep your power company's medically dependent registration and your clinician's plan; the system backs those up and does not replace them.
No. It is designed to switch over instantly in UPS mode, with nothing to start or plug in. Most people only notice when the neighbours' lights are off. There is no generator to drag out of the shed.
No. Round-trip efficiency is 30% or less, so it costs more to run on stored hydrogen than on the grid. It charges on cheap night-rate power, but the value is reliability, not savings.
There is no engine or fuel run. It needs water for the electrolyser and periodic checks. It is in development, so service arrangements would be worked out during the pilot.
Pilot installs go to people on this list first. Rural homes, farms and remote sites especially. No spam, no payment.