What is a Domestic Hydrogen Battery?
Typically, a domestic Hydrogen battery/home hydrogen battery is coupled to existing solar Photo Voltaic (PV) and can produce, store, and return enough energy to power the electrical appliances in an average home for several days.
A home hydrogen battery can combine an electrolyser (which typically uses renewable electricity and tap water to produce green hydrogen), a means of storage for the green hydrogen produced, a hydrogen fuel cell (which combines the hydrogen with oxygen in the air to make green electricity when needed), and an inverter.
Home hydrogen batteries, like the LAVO, can provide 40kWh of green energy storage. This is 3 times more power than a Tesla Powerwall Li-ion battery, and the only by-product of a LAVO hydrogen battery is heat and water.
Skills and knowledge
We are the only technicians in the Canberra region with the skills and knowledge required for the design, installation, and servicing of hydrogen battery systems. We hold multiple Australian gas, water, and electrical qualifications – the nexus of hydrogen skills. Our Director, Robert Edwards has trained in fuel cells and electrolysis at the Hydrogenics Hydrogen Academy in Brussels. Robert is also a member of numerous hydrogen-related technical and standards committees.
Unlimited backup power
The amount of backup battery storage we can provide is unlimited. Before buying a Li-ion battery or other backup power system, contact us to find out how we can provide you with unlimited kilowatt hours of green hydrogen battery backup power for your home or business – with up to 3 times the life of Li-ion batteries.
Hydrogen safety
Understanding hydrogen’s unique characteristics and hydrogen-handling equipment is critical to ensuring any hydrogen installation is safe. We have been trained by one of the largest manufacturers of hydrogen equipment in the world. We are also deeply involved in developing national vocational hydrogen skills and standards in Australia.
Home hydrogen batteries, like the LAVO, can provide 40Kwh of green energy storage. This is 3 times more power than Tesla PowerWall Li-ion battery. The only by-product is heat and water.
Home power solutions such as the PICEA are not available in Australia yet. The PICEA can produce hot water and heat for space heating. When they arrive in Australia, we will make them available to our customers.
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POWER YOUR LIFE WITH LAVO™
Introducing the next generation of energy storage. The world’s first integrated hybrid hydrogen battery that combines with rooftop solar to deliver sustainable, reliable and renewable power to your home and business. Developed in partnership with UNSW and Design Industry, LAVO™ is a hydrogen hybrid battery that stores over 40kWh of electricity – enough to power the average Australian home for 2 days. Integrating with standard rooftop solar, LAVO™ generates green hydrogen for renewable power when you need it. Globally competitive strikingly styled, contemporary lines of the main system and the iconic hydride vessels place LAVO™ at the leading edge of architectural inspired aesthetics.
LAVO™ System
LAVO™ acts as a solar sponge, integrating with rooftop solar to capture and store renewable energy for use when you need it. Creates Hydrogen from water. Stores Hydrogen into LAVO™’s patented metal hydride. Generates Electricity by converting hydrogen into power. Delivers Power at a regulated voltage to your home. Monitors Controls performance via the LAVO™ app.
Generate storage from your solar panels
Operational in conditions.10° to 50° C
FUEL CELL
The fuel cell is used to convert energy stored in the hydrogen back into electrical energy. This electrical energy is released by combining hydrogen from the hydride storage vessels and oxygen from the air to form water.
A power conversion system is used to regulate the electrical output from the fuel cell. The electrical output from the fuel cell is variable. The DC-DC converter regulates this by boosting the voltage from the fuel cell output up to match the voltage expected at the input of the hybrid inverter.
Electrolyser
The electrolyser converts excess electrical energy from the solar system through electrolysis, where the water is split into hydrogen and oxygen. The energy is stored as hydrogen and the oxygen is released into the atmosphere.
The electrolyser requires demineralised water for the electrolysis process. The integrated water purifier treats the incoming tap water, enabling the electrolyser to run using a standard mains water supply.
LAVO™ Hydride
Patented metal alloy that stores and regulates hydrogen at a pressure of 30 barg 100% recyclable the hydride will deliver 20,000 cycles of storage and charge.
LAVO™ Hydride
Hydrogen Hydride — LAVO™ uses innovative, patented metal hydride to produce batteries that last three times longer than lithium batteries at a similar price. This unique hydride formulation is energy efficient, carbon neutral, safe, non-flammable, and designed for all components to be recycled. The LAVO™ patented hydride absorbs hydrogen in metal alloy to enable safe, long term storage within a secure vessel. Sustainable energy for you home and business.
24/7 control with LAVO™ App
Internationally Recognised
Good Design Australia: Best in Class—Product Design (Commercial Industrial) Gold—Engineering Design Michael Bryce Patron’s Award
2021: LAVO awarded the Australian Good Design Award Best in Class (Product Design: Commercial Industrial), Gold (Engineering Design), and selected as the recipient of the prestigious 2021 Michael Bryce Patron’s Award. The Michael Bryce Patron’s Award honours Good Design Australia’s inaugural Patron, the late Michael J.S. Bryce AM AE KStJ to recognise the enormous contribution he made to Good Design Australia and to the Australian design community over the course of his career. The Award recognises and celebrates the best Australian designed product, service or project in the annual Australian Good Design Awards and is awarded to an entry that has the potential to shape the future economic, social, cultural and environmental aspects of our planet. 2022: LAVO secures Red Dot Best of the Best Award iF Design Gold Award.
Good Design Australia Statement
Tackling a global energy crisis, this remarkable design innovation showcases what can be achieved through university and industry collaboration and is arguably one of the best examples of ground-breaking technology coupled with world-class Industrial Design. This product has the potential to be a global game-changer in the energy market and I can’t think of a more fitting accolade to recognise such an innovative and ground-breaking Australian designed and manufactured product. – Dr Brand Gien, CEO Good Design Australia (2021)
Red Dot Jury Statement
What is impressive about LAVO is the close connection between design and technology. In combination with solar energy, this innovative hybrid hydrogen battery promotes a new way of generating energy. The design language of the entire system visualises this performance potential and blends in with the respective architecture. The user-friendly design of the interface is also convincing, staging the technology in an exciting manner.
The Lavo Hydrogen Energy battery is a novel storage option for renewable energy. Surplus electricity is both stored in a battery and converted via electrolytic processes to hydrogen, which is stored in cartridges for later reconversion to electricity in a fuel cell. The battery’s appearance is restrained and designed to blend in with residential and commercial buildings.
© LAVO™ All Rights Reserved | DISCLAIMER we have taken reasonable care and precaution to ensure that the information contained on this page is accurate, but we do not guarantee, nor do we accept any legal liability arising from or connected to the accuracy, reliability, currency or completeness of content on the LAVO™ System.
The bicarbonate-formate cycle
Want to bake cookies? Or store hydrogen energy? Baking soda could be the ticket. This mild, cheap sodium salt of bicarbonate is non-toxic and Earth-abundant.
Not baking soda exactly. The PNNL team is investigating the hydrogen energy storage properties of the long-studied bicarbonate-formate cycle. (Formate is a safe, mild liquid organic molecule.)
Here’s how it works: Solutions of formate ions (hydrogen and carbon dioxide) in water carry hydrogen based on non-corrosive alkali metal formate. The ions react with water in the presence of a catalyst. That reaction makes hydrogen and bicarbonates-the “baking soda” Autrey admires for its absence of environmental impacts.
With the right mild tweaks in pressure, the bicarbonate-formate cycle can be reversed. That provides an on-off switch for an aqueous solution that can alternately store or release hydrogen.
Before baking soda, the PNNL hydrogen storage team looked at ethanol as a liquid organic hydrogen carrier, the industry’s blanket term for storage and transport media. In tandem, they developed a catalyst that releases the hydrogen.
Catalysts are designer additives that speed the processes used to make and break chemical bonds in an energy-efficient way.
In May 2023, for a project related to the PNNL effort, EERE granted OCOchem of Richland, Washington, 5000.5 million in funding over two years to develop an electrochemical process that makes formate and formic acid from carbon dioxide. The process would bind carbon dioxide with the hydrogen located in water’s iconic chemical bond, H2O.
In a partnership just starting, PNNL will develop ways to release hydrogen from the OCOchem products.
Hydrogen storage that ‘looks like water’
In the world of hydrogen storage research, the bicarbonate-formate cycle has created a buzz for quite some time. After all, it is based on materials that are abundant, non-flammable, and non-toxic.
The cycle is built on an aqueous storage solution so mild it “looks like water,” said Autrey. “You can put out a fire with it.”
But for formate-bicarbonate salts to become a viable means of storing hydrogen energy, researchers must still develop economically feasible scenarios. So far, the technology stores hydrogen at only 20 kilograms per cubic meter, compared to liquid hydrogen’s industry standard of 70.
fundamentally, said Autrey, researchers need a systems-level understanding of the required electrochemistry and catalysis. In engineering terms, to date, the idea of a workable bicarbonate-formate cycle has a low technical readiness level.
“If we solve the catalysis problems,” he added, “we could get some real interest.”
‘An amazing shiny thing’
On the plus side, the salt solutions under consideration at PNNL release hydrogen upon reaction with water. They also operate at moderate temperatures and low pressures.
In theory, at least, as Autrey and Gutiérrez describe in their 2023 paper, the bicarbonate-formate cycle represents “a feasible green alternative for storing and transporting energy” from hydrogen.
The baking soda idea is also at the nexus of what the 2023 paper calls “several urgent scientific challenges.”
Among them are how to make a hydrogen storage media from captured excess carbon dioxide. And even to use the same media to store electrons, which offers the promise of direct formate fuel cells.
In addition, the PNNL work could provide insights for catalysis in the aqueous (water) phase. For now, the PNNL team is using palladium as their candidate catalyst. Their efforts include finding ways to make the rare metal more stable, reusable, and longer-lived.
In all, the baking soda idea “is this amazing shiny thing” for hydrogen storage, said Autrey. “What’s exciting are the possibilities.”
Reference: “Using earth abundant materials for long duration energy storage: electro-chemical and thermo-chemical cycling of bicarbonate/formate” by Oliver Y. Gutiérrez, Katarzyna Grubel, Jotheeswari Kothandaraman, Juan A. Lopez-Ruiz, Kriston P. Brooks, Mark E. Bowden and Tom Autrey, 29 March 2023, Green Chemistry.DOI: 10.1039/D3GC00219E