The first thing that fails a crew in a blackout is the appliance bay door. Electric roller doors can be wound by hand, but it costs time on every call. Behind them sit the base radio, pager and turnout system, the trickle chargers keeping the truck batteries and portable radios full, the compressor topping up breathing air cylinders, and the lights and heat in the muster room. All of those are modest loads well inside 15 kW.
With the battery and inverter in UPS mode, the station does not even notice the line dropping. Radios and alerting equipment stay up without a blip, and nobody has to drive to the station first to start a generator. For a longer outage the fuel cell runs from stored hydrogen, and because there is no engine there are no fuel runs while the brigade is out on calls.
How it works →
It charges on off-peak grid power and holds hydrogen in a low-pressure buffer for weeks. Round trip efficiency is 30% or less, so it costs more per unit than grid power, which is fine for a station that mostly sits on standby.
It is designed to AS/NZS 60079 and ISO 19880 with redundant leak sensors and automatic shutdown and venting. Any install at a station would follow the brigade's own requirements and the advice of whoever manages its buildings, and the unit would sit clear of the appliance bay and the turnout area.
Many station compressors sit well under 15 kW and would run along with the rest of the station. A larger unit may need to run on its own while other loads pause. The pilot would check the compressor's starting current against the inverter's peak headroom.
No. The battery and inverter run as a UPS, so the station is powered the instant the grid drops, and the fuel cell starts from stored hydrogen automatically. Nobody has to come in first to pull a cord or prime an engine.
It is designed to AS/NZS 60079 and ISO 19880, stores hydrogen at 30 bar or less, and shuts down and vents automatically if its redundant sensors detect a leak. Siting would be agreed with the brigade and the building owner.
Pilot installs go to people on this list first. Rural homes, farms and remote sites especially. No spam, no payment.