I’ve got to say, one can truly start envisioning a future hydrogen economy when you take a look at Honda’s Home Energy Station III. Let’s suspend belief. Let’s imagine, for the moment, that fuel-cell vehicles can be made affordably and that there is an unlimited supply of natural gas in the earth. What Honda’s trying to do is create a one-stop fuelling shop for your home and vehicle, not unlike past efforts by Stuart Energy before it was acquired by Hydrogenics. The key, at least initially, is to have a natural gas line running into the home, which would serve as the energy station’s hydrogen source fuel.

“The Home Energy Station III is designed to work in a home-based refueling environment and is able to supply a sufficient amount of hydrogen to power a fuel cell vehicle… while providing electricity for an average-sized household,” according to Honda. “A goal of this energy station is to provide high overall energy efficiency and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the more effective use of natural gas.”

The station is also able to function as a backup power generation system during power outages by using the hydrogen in the storage tank to power the internal fuel cell, providing as much as 5 kilowatts of electrical power to the home in normal and emergency conditions.

Using natural gas directly in an on-site fuel cell is a heck of a lot better than using electricity from natural-gas-fired power plants to produce hydrogen through water electrolysis. It’s simply more efficient, and there’s no line loss by doing it locally at the point of use. Fact is, a good chunk of homes these days are supplied with natural gas so you would have an instant market to pitch to.

My only question about the Honda Home Energy Station III — which, as a third-generation prototype, is still a prototype — is whether it captures waste heat from the process to provide home water/air heating. I have my doubts, because the station is using technology from Plug Power Inc., which uses proton exchange membrane fuel cells that operate at relatively low temperatures — 60 to 160 degrees Celsius. Not that some heat couldn’t be captured and applied, but it would have to complement a traditional natural gas heating system.

On the other hand, solid-oxide fuel cells operate at much higher temperatures, which is why companies such as Fuel Cell Technologies (FCT) of Kingston are touting their products for providing both electricity and heating. Problem is higher heat means slower startup times, and FCT in particular doesn’t have a hydrogen storage/fuelling angle with its product, meaning no transportation angle.

I guess you can’t have it all. And, of course, we’d all love to see a future of hydrogen production through water electrolysis, with renewable energy such as solar or wind as the power source. Maybe one day we can have hybrid hydrogen production systems that switch back and forth between natural gas reformation and electrolysis, allowing the solar panels on our rooftops to produce hydrogen for a rainy day.

Yeah, right. Maybe if you’ve got a million bucks to spend. This is all technically possible today. Just prohibitively expensive.