UCell at The Calthorpe Project
Date: Saturday, 30 June 2018
On the last Saturday of June 2018, we held our workshop at The Calthorpe Project, Hydrogen – Fuel of the Future? The two weeks before the big day were devoted to getting everything ready: preparing the fuel stack and our demonstration kit cars, and Nick put in the extra mile to prepare an impressive demonstration of how to link photovoltaics and water electrolysis. On the day itself, it seemed our marketing efforts had paid off, young and old, from near and far, families, investment bankers, retirees and artists came together at Calthorpe to learn about hydrogen and how to design the energy system of the future. Starting off with an introduction to hydrogen and fuel cells, we quickly moved to the more practical part of the day. All the children were amazed by our fuel cell demonstration cars while their parents were eager to hear about how these work.
From there we went on to our fuel cell stack. We used it to power a fridge filled with drinks and delicious home-made ice cream kindly provided by Calthorpe, to give everyone some much-needed relief from the hot afternoon sun. And while everybody enjoyed their hydrogen-cooled goodies, we went into more detail and explained how energy in our stack is stored and produced.
As a big finale, Nick had connected a dozen solar cells to his home-made water electrolyser. This showed perfectly how we can use renewable energy to produce hydrogen, which then can be fed into fuel cells. We even set up a little work station so everybody could try building a DIY electrolyser. The day was a huge success, there were a lot of questions answered and discussions were so lively that we even struggled to leave Calthorpe at all that day! We had a great day and hope that we can return to The Calthorpe Project in the future.
Special thanks to Rokiah Yam and all at The Calthorpe Project for hosting us for the day!
Text by Max Maier
Photo credit: Gyen Angel