The first hydrogen village in Western Macedonia

The first large-scale “experiment” for the urban use of hydrogen will be implemented soon on West Macedonia. A village or town to be selected by the Public Enterprise of Gas Distribution Networks (DEDA) will be transformed into a “hydrogen village”, in order to study in real conditions the data of the production, transport and use of hydrogen for urban consumption and electricity generation.

As the CEO of DEDA points out in – Marios Tsakasthe design symbolizes the beginning of its new era hydrogenwhich in the coming years is projected to penetrate further into electricity generation and transportation, replacing natural gas and conventional liquid fuels. The main advantage of hydrogen is that its use produces no pollutants but only water vapor while the disadvantage at present are the high costs and difficulties in production and transportation.

In the case of Western Macedonia, hydrogen will be produced from natural gas, ie it is the so-called “blue hydrogen” in contrast to the “green hydrogen” produced from renewable sources. According to the design, the natural gas will be transported in compressed form (CNG) to the point of consumption and will be utilized in two ways:

• It will be distributed through a network directly to homes and use in heating boilers (DEDA has started contacts with European companies that have the know-how for hydrogen boilers)
• It will be converted into electricity to meet the needs of residents in electricity.

The amount of investment for the implementation of the pilot project is estimated at 1.5 – 2.5 million euros. In the next phase, hydrogen will be produced with raw material gas instead of natural gas and the project will be combined with the program of DEDA for exploitation of domestically produced biogas which – according to preliminary studies – can meet demand corresponding to… more from 1 billion cubic meters of gas per year. Biogas is produced from waste and by-products of livestock and agricultural production, which means that the raw material is scattered throughout Greece. DEDA studies indicate the construction of small biogas plants, of the order of 3 megawatts that will be locally exploited raw material and the introduction of biogas into the company’s networks.