China's First Intrinsically Storage-Free Off-Grid PV Hydrogen Production Project Commences Construction

China's first "intrinsically storage-free" off-grid hydrogen production system-the Shenzhen Energy Etoke 5MW Off-Grid PV-to-Hydrogen Project-has officially begun construction.

The project utilizes innovative technology with completely independent intellectual property rights, marking a critical step for China in moving green hydrogen production from the laboratory to engineering-scale applications.

The project adopts a breakthrough "intrinsically off-grid, storage-free" approach, eliminating traditional energy storage devices. A 5MW photovoltaic array directly powers the hydrogen production and purification equipment. The core technology lies in flexible hydrogen production and purification processes, enabling intelligent tracking of the PV array's maximum power output, load-following operation, and optimized scheduling. This not only simplifies the system structure and reduces investment costs but also significantly reduces reliance on the power grid.

Prior to this, the technology has been validated at the hundreds-of-kilowatts scale in laboratory experiments conducted by the Department of Electrical Engineering at Tsinghua University and the Tsinghua Sichuan Institute.

The current 5MW engineering-scale project will fully test the technology's practical applicability and economic performance, providing a demonstration for low-cost, large-scale green hydrogen production in China. The project carries multiple demonstration values:

1) Exploring the economic feasibility of fully off-grid green hydrogen operations;

2) Building an engineering practice platform for green hydrogen disciplines, promoting talent development;

3) Deepening industry-academia-research cooperation and advancing interdisciplinary studies.

Shenzhen Energy stated that this project will inject new momentum into the company's green and low-carbon transformation, and will support breakthroughs in core technologies of China's hydrogen energy industry.