On Monday, Dominion Energy, the listed utility that provides electricity to 7 million residential and business customers across 16 U.S. states, announced that it is developing multiple clean energy pilot projects that will blend hydrogen into its gas distribution systems. The first such pilot project is already underway at a facility in Utah.
Based out of Dominion’s Training Academy in Utah, the company’s first pilot project will blend 5 percent hydrogen into a test system to learn how hydrogen works in gas lines and appliances before blending into a larger system that serves more than 1 million gas utility customers in Utah. Dominion recently proposed a similar project in North Carolina.
“Hydrogen is a huge innovation in clean energy,” said Dominion’s Chief Innovation Officer Mark Webb, in a comment on the Utah pilot project. “It’s clean energy for homes and businesses and also clean fuel for vehicles and manufacturing plants,” Webb continued. “Few other energy sources have the potential to do so much good, so broadly across the economy. We’re investing in hydrogen today so it can hopefully transform the clean energy landscape in 5 or 10 years.”
Swiss Army Knife
Touting hydrogen as “the Swiss Army knife of clean energy,” Dominion noted in an official announcement of the pilot project hydrogen can do everything natural gas can do, but with fewer or even zero emissions. When produced using excess energy from solar, wind or nuclear, hydrogen produces zero greenhouse gas emissions. It can be blended with natural gas to heat homes or generate electricity or used as a clean fuel for transportation and manufacturing. Dominion is currently exploring other projects that use hydrogen in those applications.
“We’re reimagining the kinds of energy we deliver to our customers through our wires and pipes,” said Craig Wagstaff, Dominion’s Senior Vice President of Western Gas Distribution. “Just as we’re building solar and wind to deliver more clean energy to our electric customers, we’re developing hydrogen and renewable natural gas to deliver more clean energy to our gas customers.”
Besides its independent pilot projects in Utah and, prospectively, North Carolina, Dominion Energy is a lead sponsor of the Low Carbon Resources Initiative (LCRI), a 5-year, $100 million research and development effort focused on emerging clean energy technology.
