The Globe and Mail ran this article (registration may be required) on Saturday about plans to build a hydrogen village on Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province. PEI is on the Atlantic Ocean so there are great wind resources coming off the water. It already has 5 per cent of its electricity produced by wind, which is relatively easy — though still significant — for such a small area.

I had a post on this in April. The plan is to have Mississauga-based Hydrogenics Corp. integrate an electrolyzer and hydrogen fuel station with a large wind turbine. This would allow the province to store wind energy as hydrogen, which can then be used later to produce local power through a fuel cell or ICE system when the wind isn’t blowing. The hydrogen is also going to be used to power some fuel-cell utility vehicles and shuttle buses on the site.

The article touts this as a first project of its kind in the world, but it isn’t. There’s a similar wind-hydrogen project in Norway, and Toronto’s Windshare project has a wind turbine on the CNE grounds that is attached to a hydrogen production and fueling system used by some fuel-cell utility vehicles on site. There are also other energy production technologies being integrated with hydrogen systems, including solar-hydrogen fuelling stations in California and geothermal-hydrogen systems in Iceland. That said, the $11-million PEI project contributes to the innovation pool, and it’s nice to see this tiny province being a leader in Canada. It will be a good learning opportunity, and indeed, the knowledge gained through this project could be exported in the future.

Also noteworthy is that the Globe and Mail article, quoting my pal MacMurray Whale at Sprott Securities, mentions Vancouver-based VRB Power, which has environmentally friendly reverse-flow batteries that can be used on a utility scale to store energy from intermittent renewable power sources, such as wind or solar. Whale believes this technology has a better chance for utility storage applications than hydrogen fuel-cell technology.

Referring to the VRB technology: “There’s no hydrogen made. There’s no hydrogen storage needed. There’s no platinum needed, because there’s no catalyst in the electrolyte, and they can make it for a dollar a kilowatt, which is on par with lead acid batteries,” said Whale.

What I’d personally love to see is a jurisdiction, whether PEI or Ontario or some other province, create a renewable energy village that compares different types of technologies under the same conditions. Really, what PEI would benefit from most is to put the VRB technology side-by-side with the Hydrogenics technology and see which one operates most reliably, efficiently, and at the least cost.

A hydrogen village is too narrowly focused. What we need is technological comparisons.

I finally got a chance to speak with management at Vancouver-based Sonic Environmental Solutions Inc., which uses sonic energy — not incineration — to remove PCBs from contaminated soils.

I discuss the company today in my Clean Break column, which takes a look at opportunities for Sonic Environmental in Canada and abroad.