Fossil fuel heating within the building sector is responsible for 30% of the United Kingdom’s total CO2 emissions. In response, the United Kingdom government has outlined a hydrogen strategy as part of its 2030 Net Zero Target, particularly for industrial and transportation purposes. However, the integration of hydrogen into building systems remains a subject of ongoing debate.
This research explores the potential for green hydrogen through local solar power, while electricity grid is serving as a backup system to support building energy demand. A comprehensive bottom-up analysis is conducted comparing various energy system configurations involving hydrogen, including grid distribution, fuel cell utilization, natural gas blending, and hybrid hydrogen combined with a heat pump. These systems then compared to the existing technologies, such as natural gas grid system, and all-electric heat pump system. About 25 houses consist of 5 typological buildings have been modelled. The analysis extends to calculate energy consumption, cost-effectiveness, and carbon emission equivalent of each system. An optimized system of integrating hydrogen will be suggested, which will be implemented on a larger scale to assess its impact on costs and other relevant parameters.
The utilization of hydrogen in buildings will become prominent if the source and distribution of hydrogen in industry is becoming widely accessible, then it will be continuously applied in the building use. Coinciding with the increasing visibility of other green alternatives to meet the net zero energy requirement.
The findings indicate that an optimized hybrid hydrogen and heat pump system has significant result than other hydrogen system. This system facilitates the utilization of hydrogen as a heating source during peak hours in the evening and in cold seasons, while a direct heat pump powered by photovoltaics can be employed in the summer and daytime. Therefore, hourly configuration is required to maintain the continuation of the operation. This approach resulted on reducing energy consumption to an half of the non-optimized hybrid system when the heat pump is constantly operated using electricity from the fuel cell solely. Notably, cost efficiency improves significantly with larger scale implementations, the larger the area is, the lower the cost is generated. Ultimately, about 6,882 square meter area is required to provide the appliances of hydrogen production for 234 dwellings in one neighbourhood.
From a cost perspective, while hydrogen is flowed intensively and distributed in the city, hydrogen grid boilers become more viable option. While, blending natural gas boiler serves as a transitional solution during the energy transition phase. Ultimately, natural gas will obviously phase out. With this study, the final words on the implementation of hydrogen in buildings will never be answered explicitly on the basis in which system has the most optimal solution for hydrogen systems; it will always depend on its particular context and location. A further comprehensive analysis of cost-effectiveness and investment rate per scenario, regardless the dynamic model of set-up on hybrid heat pump appliances, is required.