Final results of Belgium's Don Quichote project
The Don Quichote project (Demonstration Of New Qualitative Innovative Concept of Hydrogen Out of wind Turbine Electricity) demonstrated that the use of hydrogen as a large scale renewable energy storage solution is not “tilting windmills” anymore, but has technical and economic viability.
It represents an interesting commercial opportunity to connect intermittent renewable electricity to transport applications.
The Don Quichote demonstration plant was implemented at a large logistic centre of the Colruyt Group in Halle, Belgium.
The plant at this centre is interconnected to an existing hydrogen refuelling facility that supplies hydrogen to a fleet of material handling vehicles. It receives energy from renewable energy sources: wind and solar power.
In the project, components of an existing hydrogen refuelling system were replaced by innovative, more efficient components, and integrated with a renewable energy source, thereby realizing a renewable energy storage capacity based on hydrogen.
By demonstrating the impact on efficiency and costs of the operations of a large logistics centre, the project demonstrated the market readiness of the components needed for storing renewable energy in HYDROGEN.