Inside Climate News: A Solar-Hydrogen Nanogrid in Large or Small

Inside Climate News: A Solar-Hydrogen Nanogrid in Large or Small
Published on
June 25, 2022

The article "Warming Trends: Putting Citizen Scientists to Work, Assuring Climate-Depressed Kids That the Future is Bright, and Deploying Solar-Hydrogen Generators" was published by InsideClimateNews.org on June 25, 2022 and written by Katelyn Weisbrod.

When disasters like wildfires and hurricanes strike, victims left without power often resort to diesel-powered generators to keep the lights on. But a solar power company this week unveiled its fully renewable alternative, and it can do a lot more than just keep the lights on.

Powered by solar and green hydrogen, Sesame Solar’s mobile nanogrids can be quickly trucked into a disaster area and brought up and running by a novice in as little as 15 minutes. The nanogrid can be used to restore power for vital services during emergencies, including communications and WiFi stations, medical equipment and water purification and filtration systems. The only inputs needed are sun for the solar panels and water for the hydrogen fuel cell, which uses hydrogen separated from oxygen in water molecules to power a battery on board.

After seeing the devastation from Hurricane Katrina, longtime entrepreneur and CEO of Sesame Solar Lauren Flanagan was inspired to pursue a way to help people after climate disasters.

“If we could figure out how to make mobile, easy to use, fast to deploy scalable power plus essential services after a catastrophe like Katrina, that’s actually what we need to help adapt to this,” Flanagan said.

A nanogrid comes in two sizes, a smaller one that can be towed by a truck and a larger one that can be transported on a flatbed trailer. Depending on the equipment inside the nanogrid, the price can range from $100,000 to $300,000.

Sesame Solar’s customers have included Comcast and the U.S. Air Force. Flanagan hopes that someday her company will be able to lease the nanogrids out and get them to places that are prone to disasters before they happen.

“We can’t turn back the clock right now, sadly,” she said. “We can’t stop hurricanes and wildfires and tornadoes from coming, but we can adapt as a people, as society, as communities, to how we can mitigate the impacts from those and do so in a way with renewable power.”

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