Depoe Bay pursues state construction grant for hydrogen fuel-cell backup at City Hall

Depoe Bay city staff and project representatives on the grant team reviewed a draft application to the Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE) for construction funding to install a hydrogen fuel-cell backup power system at City Hall and a portable hydrogen generator for the community center.

The proposal uses rooftop solar (proposed ~10 kilowatts), a small wind turbine (proposed ~10 kilowatts), batteries and an electrolyzer to produce green hydrogen on site, compress and store it in tanks, and run a hydrogen fuel cell to power City Hall's emergency operations center. The project team described a containerized equipment layout that would house the electrolyzer, dryer, compressor, reverse-osmosis filtration for city water, piping, sensors and a control/inverter system.

Paul, the project presenter, said the design is modular: fixed fuel-cell units at City Hall (an 8-kilowatt fuel cell was described as sized to cover the building) and portable fuel-cell generator(s) intended for the community center. He described daisy-chaining smaller cart-mounted units (4-kilowatt units were discussed) and adding additional tanks…