Team:Macquarie Australia/Gold Intergrated
From our various human practice events ( Click here! ) we found that there was a missing link between industry and the broader public with respect to communication about hydrogen gas energy, so we aimed to bridge the gap to further propel the innovation, implementation and utilisation of renewable hydrogen gas.
Stage One
Our first step in this process involved conducting an online survey that was completed by over 150 respondents across multiple age brackets and geographic locations within Australia. This survey was designed to give us insight into consumers’ perceptions around renewable energy and what sort of product might appeal to the Australian market. A statistical analysis of the results was performed and yielded some extremely useful information:
Based on these results we realised that there was unmet demand for a product that empowered individual consumers to produce their own renewable energy at home. In response to this, and after reviewing the huge potential for hydrogen vehicles over the next two decades in Australia, H2ydroGEM decided that an at-home hydrogen refuelling station would be the best product to create as our prototype.
Stage Two
Based on this survey and market research (link), we noted the H2 industry is set to grow over the next decade exponentially and so we investigated the possibility of hydrogen fuelled vehicles being the most promising usage of our product. To get some valuable feedback on this idea, our team approached a mentor at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia’s premier national research organisation. CSIRO has dedicated a significant amount of time and resources towards improving the viability of hydrogen gas as an alternative renewable energy source, believing that Australia could be “the number one renewable fuel provider in the world's fastest growing region” with an export industry equal in scale to the LNG industry. Given their longstanding experience in producing hydrogen, three members of H2ydroGEM met with Dr. Howard Lovatt, Team Leader of Electrical Machines at CSIRO, to gain feedback on our project and discuss a potential future collaboration between our team and CSIRO. We were advised that our product held strong long-term potential given that hydrogen vehicles will become more popular in Australia over the next two decades. Our project is sufficiently far enough along the fuel path to be a viable business venture and has great potential for expansion. Based on this recommendation, our team is investigating a short-term partnership with AGL Energy to fund our long-term refuelling station prototype. See ‘Future Directions and Sources of Funding’ in our business plan for more information. Dr. Lovatt thought that selling the refuelling station as a bundle with hydrogen vehicles was a good and suggested that the most likely company to entertain the possibility of such a partnership is Toyota as well as the CSIRO!
Stage Three
Based on the some questions raised at the CSIRO, the team went back to the communities to conduct in depth interviews with 40 participants to further guide our prototype design alongside potential ethical queries that our users may have. We found that:
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Our users are very concerned about the long-term impacts of climate change and reliance on fossil fuels. They want the empowerment to be a part of the solution by taking their own actions
