Dialog designs ‘smart hydrogen’ facilities for UBC

Image courtesy UBC Applied Science.

The University of British Columbia (UBC) recently opened its $23-million Smart Hydrogen Energy District (SHED), for which consulting engineering firm Dialog led design of the first two phases, including an electric vehicle (EV) charging stations’ e-house and a hydrogen production and fuelling station (pictured).

SHED’s grand opening was held on June 12 at UBC’s Vancouver Campus, with Josie Osborne—provincial minister of energy, mines and low-carbon innovation—in attendance. It will support clean energy research to advance British Columbia’s hydrogen infrastructure.

Dialog’s integrated team provided architectural, landscape and structural, mechanical and electrical engineering services for the project, one of the first in Canada to combine hydroelectricity, solar power and hydrogen in one site (i.e. using the renewables to produce ‘green hydrogen’).

Further, the hydrogen station is the first in British Columbia to serve both light- and heavy-duty vehicles. Parked EVs will be able to both draw power from the grid and return excess stored electricity back to the grid during peak demand. With the right infrastructure, UBC suggests, parked cars can serve as mass power banks.

“With SHED, we demonstrate hydrogen as a bridge between renewable electricity and sustainable energy services,” says Walter Mérida, professor of mechanical engineering in UBC’s faculty of applied science and SHED’s research lead. “Hydrogen can play a critical role in Canada’s transition to a low-carbon economy.”

Diagram courtesy MéridaLabs.