**Title**: Energy in the North - Paul McKinley and Peter Kempster
**Date**: March 19, 2025
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Paul McKinley and Peter Kempster


00;00;00;19 - 00;00;04;20 [Peter Kempster] Alaska was unbelievably remote in a very different way to us. We are remote as well, but we spend many, many days in 40 plus degree centigrade

00;00;10;19 - 00;00;22;14 [Amanda Byrd] This week on energy in the north. Guest host Paul McKinley from the Alaska Center for Energy and Power speaks to Peter Kempster, the works delivery manager for Horizon Power's Gascoyne region in Western Australia. After visiting a dedicated 700 kilowatt solar to 100 kilowatt hydrogen energy facility in Denham on Western Australia's mid-west coast. They were driving north to Carnarvon in a truck and Paul had the opportunity to talk to Peter about the green hydrogen system and he started the conversation by asking Peter about the similarities and differences between Alaska and Western Australia.

00;00;46;00 - 00;00;50;02 [Peter Kempster] Probably one of the the key similarities is isolation. The Alaska was unbelievably remote in a very different way to us. We are remote as well, but we spend many, many days in 40 plus degree centigrade environments. The things that catch you out here are mostly heat related. We're in Alaska, has the same isolation, but it's temperature related. It is obviously much colder.

00;01;06;28 - 00;01;15;14 [Paul McKinley] We just got a tour of the hybrid energy system, the solar hydrogen microgrid facility, and you've been able to kind of tell us about that as we've been exploring hydrogen I found it really interesting to be able to see the facility in the plant up close.

00;01;30;03 - 00;01;39;12 [Peter Kempster] So the system was built as a pilot project around combined funding from Horizon Power. Western Australia State government and ARENA. We are actually producing green hydrogen from solar. We have a storage facility where we store hydrogen and we're running it for 400 kilowatt fuel cell bring the hydrogen back into the system when we've got no solar.

00;01;46;12 - 00;01;49;26 [Paul McKinley] So there's been a lot of interest globally in that exact system that you're describing, so turning excess renewable power into hydrogen for later consumption in a fuel cell. You guys are actually ones that are doing it and you're learning lessons along the way.

00;01;59;24 - 00;02;05;09 [Peter Kempster] Ohh, there's lots of lessons. Learning about working with hydrogen, and because it is such a volatile gas. So to work with the government agencies that actually do gas accreditation and the safety aspects of gas in Western Australia has been a
long journey because of they didn't have rules around working with gas. So we've now developed
a set of guidelines as well as that are we using on our Hydrogen facility on how we appropriately train our people to work with hydrogen. So there's a whole set of rules that are based area natural gas, but there's no rules set around hydrogen gas. Probably the other major challenge for the site is the environment where we built it. And so we've got a beautiful solar environment, but it's hot. So getting a hydrogen plant, especially the fuel cell to work in days with up to 50 degree centigrade has been challenging for components to actually operate correctly in those temperatures. Denham was really built about to show off the efficiencies of using hydrogen in that way so they really as far as bare boned some of the planning to, I guess reduce Auxiliary loads.

00;03;14;12 - 00;03;20;19 [Paul McKinley] We've been able to tour some of the other microgrid facilities that you manage. You mentioned that there's some interest in maybe a hydrogen comparison project being developed. 

00;03;20;19 - 00;03;37;19 [Peter Kempster] There's obviously the long term storage capability of hydrogen. But yeah, everything comes at a bit of a significantly higher cost. Battery storage isn't as efficient as a long term storage, but it's, you know, the price is much more comparable to being a reality to actually achieve.

00;03;37;19 - 00;03;54;06 [Amanda Byrd] Peter Kempster is the works delivery manager for Horizon Power in Western Australia. Paul McKinlay is the Arctic energy advisor for the Alaska Center for Energy and Power and I'm Amanda Byrd chief storyteller for ACEP. Find this story and more at uhf.edu/acep.