Unique hydrogen power plant proposal encounters opposition

A newly-launched renewable energy firm from Australia is hoping to ward off local resistance to a wind farm proposal that the North Ayrshire Council is considering, by submitting an application for a hydrogen plant with which it is possible to generate electricity even on windless days.

In a scheme requiring an investment of sixty million pounds to be located at the seventy thousand acre Clyde Muirshiel regional park, the renewable energy firm, Wind Hydrogen, which is based in Sydney has filed for a patent for a technology which uses wind power to generate hydrogen which can then be stocked up and later transformed into electricity on windless days.

The renewable energy start-up is of the view that the linked developments would conquer the challenge of wind energy irregularities, and if it sees the light of day it will be the first and only such scheme anywhere in the world.

Local activists have however accused the renewable energy firm of lying to the locals by claiming that the energy used to generate the hydrogen is not obtained from the wind turbines and that the project therefore does not get rid of wind energy intermittency problems.

The renewable energy firm began public consultations on the project with the community in Ayrshire in the beginning of 2006, when it put forward a wind farm proposal of one hundred and twenty five turbines as well as a hydrogen plant with a total power output of three hundred and seventy five megawatts. The scheme required an investment of one hundred and fifty million pounds and would have been the biggest in Scotland were it not for the resistance it met.

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