Queensland’s Hills International College and Energy Estate have partnered in a joint venture to build a “campus-scale” renewable hydrogen plant at the Hills Jimboomba campus south of Brisbane. The Jimboomba Renewable Hydrogen Plant will include a solar PV system and a hydrogen production and storage facility.
Energy Estate will develop the project under its HydrogenGrowth platform, which plans to create various small- and large-scale “green hydrogen” opportunities in Australia and abroad. This would include several large-scale plants in Queensland, such as this one at the school.
Kevin Peakman, Energy Estate’s director of hydrogen, said:
This is a great opportunity to develop the use of hydrogen in southeast Queensland in a practical, distributed environment.
South Korean government-owned power company KOMIPO (Korea Midland Power) and International renewables developer Elecseed are also supporting the project by investing in expanding the existing 250kW Hills Foundation Solar Farm.
The Hills Foundation Solar Farm will expand to 2MW to supply the Jimboomba Renewable Hydrogen Plant being developed by Energy Estate. Once the hydrogen plant is complete, it will supply Hills Educational Foundation and Hills Golf Club with unlimited renewable electricity. “We are also pleased to support the carbon-neutral goals of the College and provide a meaningful, hands-on opportunity to share that knowledge with the College and its students,” added Peakman.
Joseph Marinov, the CEO at Hills Educational Foundation, concluded:
The Foundation has progressed towards a carbon-neutral goal by establishing large ground-based solar facilities, converting our diesel buses to run on hydrogen resulting in reduced diesel consumption, and are in the process of establishing a green hydrogen production facility and energy storage capacity.
This multi-faceted project, which also includes potentially supplying oxygen to the adjacent wastewater treatment plant to reduce operational costs, demonstrates how the use of renewable energy to generate hydrogen can advance the hydrogen economy in Australia.
The Hills Educational Foundation is a non-profit that runs the College. The project is aligned with its commitment to offer students theoretical and practical hands-on learning in hydrogen and renewable energy.
