Telstra says it has been testing a hydrogen fuel cell with solar power and energy storage to help power the network at times when the power from the grid is out. The system was installed around a year ago about 90kms east of Melbourne.

Bordering on the Yarra Rangers National Park, the area is rather isolated and can be subjected to frequent power outages. Telstra’s fuel cell has been called upon to provide power once a month on average.

“Over the past six months, the fuel cell has been called upon six times to provide back-up power. These mains power outages have range from as short as 12 minutes to over seven hours. Each time the fuel cell has cut in to seamlessly keep our customers connected,” says Telstra’s John Romano.

Solar power and onsite water are used to create the hydrogen fuel. This hydrogen is then stored ready and waiting to be used in the fuel cell – it uses an electrochemical process of combining hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity, water and heat.

The Telstra solar fuel cell has the capacity to supply power for up to 8 hours. It was designed in collaboration with Sefca and Acta. Telstra says that they were able to work closely with the companies involved in order to come out with a world-first product that would work specifically for their needs.

Sefca and Acta have put this under the belt and continued to develop more fuel cells around the world with other telephone companies.

“While we will be looking to deploy additional solar fuel cells to provide back-up power at other networks sites around the country, we’ll also continue our research into alternative renewable energy production and storage technologies,” says Mr. Romano.

Telstra has been using solar panels for longer than most now as they started using them in remote locations around 1978. Today they have 13 850 sites nationally that use solar power. However, solar power is mainly only used in small, remote locations or where grid power is not available.